Chap. III.] THE ELEPHANT. 
127 
structure; but looking to the intimate connection between 
the mechanism concerned in the functions of respiration 
and deglutition, and seeing that the proboscis served in 
a double capacity as an instrument of voice and an organ 
for the prehension of food, he ventured (apparently 
without adverting to the abnormal form of the stomach) 
to express the opinion that this muscle, viewing its 
attachment to the trachea, might either have some 
influence in raising the diaphragm, and thereby assisting 
in expiration, " or that it might raise the cardiac orifice 
of the stomach, and so aid this organ to regurgitate a 
portion of its contents into the oesophagus." 1 
Dr. Harrison, on the reflection that tf we have no sa- 
tisfactory evidence that the animal ever ruminates," 
thought it useless to speculate on the latter supposition 
as to the action of the newly discovered muscle, and 
rather inclined to the surmise that it was designed to 
assist the elephant in producing the remarkable sound 
through his proboscis known as " trumpeting ; " but there 
is little room to doubt that of the two the rejected hy- 
pothesis was the more correct one. I have elsewhere 
described the occurrence to which I was myself a witness 2 , 
of elephants inserting their proboscis in their mouths, 
and withdrawing gallons of water, which could only have 
been contained in the receptacle figured by Camper and 
Home, and of which the true uses were discerned by the 
clear intellect of Professor Owen. I was not, till very 
recently, aware that a similar observation as to the re- 
markable habit of the elephant, had been made by the 
author of the Ayeen Akbery, in his account of the Feel 
1 Proceed. Roy. Irish Acad., vol. iv. p. 133. 
2 In the account of an elephant corral, chap. vi. 
