ELEPHANTS, ANCIENT AND MODERN — Order, 
PROBOSCIDEA 
ELEPHANTS may be briefly described as large, vegetable-eating 
animals, whose upper lip and nose are together drawn out into 
a proboscis or “trunk,” long enough to reach the ground. 
They were once cosmopolites, but now are restricted to Africa 
and tropical Asia. 
The anatomical peculiarities of the elephants (family Elephantide) 
are largely adaptations to their colossal size, never greater than at present. 
MOLAR TEETH OF ELEPHANTS. 
1, Mammoth; 2, Mastodon; 3, African Elephant (‘‘lozenge” pattern); 4, Indian 
Elephant. Figures 1, 3, and 4 show the pattern of the dentine ridges in the worn 
crown; Fig. 2 is a side view of a mastodon’s molar, 
To this fact is due the pillarlike straightness of the legs (medieval writers 
asserted they had no joints therein), suitable to support so great a body; 
and the hollowness of the huge skull, whose interior is a network of bracing 
plates of bone, set like the struts and ties in a truss bridge, between which 
are air spaces communicating with the mouth and nose. Were the skull 
bones solid, even the muscles of that massive neck could not sustain the 
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