OP LIVING ELEPHANTS. 181 



These slight differences in the characters of the tusks, which had 

 not imposed on the genius of Aristole *, have inclined some ancient 

 and some modern philosophers to dispute their title to the name of 

 teeth : but among true naturalists, there is no discussion except with 

 respect to the class of teeth to which we should refer them. liinnseus 

 and Wiedemann preferred to consider them canine rather than incisor 

 teeth, because the)^ come out of the mouth like the canine teeth of 

 the wild boar ; but the four incisors of the rat-taupe also come out of 

 the mouth ; so that it would be a mere dispute about words ; it is 

 clear that the tusks of the elephant are implanted into the incisive 

 bone, and that, on that account, it is to the incisors of the glires 

 they correspond f . 



The molar teeth of elephants give them, still more perceptibly than 

 their incisors, a resemblance to the glires ; for it is only in these latter 

 animals that we find molar teeth consisting of transverse plates paral- 

 lel to each other ; such are those of the sea-hogs (cabiais), field mice, 

 and hares ; several of these teeth may be mistaken for those of an ele- 

 phant in miniature J. 



In a word, in the entire head of the elephant, there is but the 

 shortness of the bones of the nose, caused by the necessity of afford- 

 ing room and giving play to the muscles of the trunk, which finds any 

 resemblance in the tapir ; again, the connexions are not the same ; 

 and, whilst in the tapir, as in the rhinoceros, the maxillary bone 

 comes to interpose itself at the edge of the external nares, between 

 the nasal and intermaxillary bones, in the elephant these two last 

 bones touch, as in the glires and most other quadrupeds. 



This resemblance in the heads does not exist, as much as one might 

 suppose, in the other parts of the body. 



The scapula of the elephant however resembles only that of the 

 hare, by the bifurcation of its acromion. 



Article I. 

 General Description of the Osteology of the Elephant, principally 

 taken from the Elephant of India, 



\.— Of the Head. 

 One might get an idea of the general form and of the details of the 

 parts of the head of living elephants from our fig. 1, pi. 7 ; 2 and 3, 



* Aristot. Hist, an., lib. ii, c. xi ; Plin. lib. \iii, c. iv ; Philostrat. Vita Apoll. 

 lib. ii, c. iv, acknowledge the tusks to be teeth. Juba, quoted by Pliny, loc. cit. and 

 Pausanias, lib. v, c. xii, stated that they considered them as horns ; but this whim- 

 sical idea did not merit the support^ of Ludolphi (^Ethiop., lib. i, cap. x), nor that 

 of Perrault (Description of the elephant of Versailles) . 



t I have not been able to understand what M. Tilesius means to say in his note 

 on the article relative to the mammoth of M. Adams (Mem. de Petersb., tome v, 

 p. 456). After quoting the passage where Linnseus says that the elephant has no 

 incisors, but that his upper canine teeth are elongated, and that wherein I say on 

 the contrary that it is his upper incisors that are elongated into tusks, he re- 

 proaches me with having adopted the error of Linnaeus. With regard to the errors 

 committed by M. Tilesius himself in saying that these tusks are not teeth, that they 

 have no enamel, &c., I shall not take up my time in refuting them. 



X M. Tilesius was no less mistaken on the molars of elephants than on their inci- 

 sors, when he said loc. cit. p. 457, Qv.ales in.nullo alio animaUum genere inveniuntur. 



