EVOLUTION OF THE ELEPHANT 
weight of so ponderous a head. The brain is very small, proportionately, 
and of a low type. The feet are short, smaller behind than before, and 
five-toed, each toe being united to its fellow by skin, but covered by a small 
separate hoof. The teeth present another striking peculiarity. There are 
no canines. The incisors are developed into long tusks, either with or 
without a coating of enamel, which in modern elephants exist only in the 
upper jaws, but in some ancient ones grew in both jaws. The cheek teeth « 
are large, not easily distinguished as molars and premolars, and consist 
of upright plates of hard dentine, the spaces between which are filled with 
the softer ‘‘cement,”’ which wears away more easily; thus the crowns of 
the teeth are kept rough with transverse ridges. The arrangement of the 
dentine plates, and the consequent pattern made by their exposed edges 
on the worn crown, vary with genera and species, and serve as distinguish- 
ing marks. The general anatomy shows a comparatively low organization. 
The elephant is another almost solitary representative of the 
departed glory of a commanding race, — one of the most primi- 
tive, peculiar, and unchanging of the orders of Ungu- 
lates, the Proboscidea. A few in India and Burma, 
saved from destruction only by human guardianship; a few 
more in Africa, soon to become dependent for survival upon 
similar protection, alone remain of a former world full of ele- 
phants. Even a short time ago, as geologists reckon time, ele- 
phants were multitudinous and, so to speak, possessed of great 
estates. The Indian one perhaps never passed beyond the bar- 
riers of desert or mountain north and east of it; but fossilized 
species closely similar, as well as others more nearly allied to 
the African, preceded it in the Orient or were contemporary 
with the youth of the species; and our African species, as well 
as extinct predecessors still larger in size, once wandered along 
both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. 
At that time (Miocene) it is believed that dry land nearly or 
altogether divided that sea where it is still narrow between Italy 
and Tunis (the ancient “‘Africa’’), of which land bridge Malta 
is a fragment yet above water; and in the rocks of Malta are 
found remains of adult dwarf elephants no larger than tapirs, 
387 
Evolution. 
