Chap. HI.] 



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 u 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. Boy. Irish Acad., vol. iv. p. 133. 



2 In the account of an elephant corral, chap. vi. 



