98 
PACHYDERMES. 
and roots, while smelling and touch seems to 
guide to those which have been uprooted, the eye 
being seldom, if ever, used in discriminating their 
food. 
The skeleton of the Pachydermes is necessarily 
of great strength, perhaps better expressed by the 
word massive. The immense weight of the head 
in most species renders a muscular apparatus of 
great power indispensable, and for this purpose 
there must be a large surface of insertion for the 
muscles. The head, by its extended surface 
gives attachment to those of the neck, which 
are the most powerful, not only for the support 
of the head, but to assist in the operations of 
digging, or employing the tusks or horn as a 
defence. “ The processes of the cervical vertebra: 
are here more strongly developed, than in the 
long flexible neck of the Ruminantia, and the 
spinous processes of the dorsal vertebrae are 
lengthened, and strong, and generally terminated 
by round tubercles. The scapula is generally 
broader at its vertebral margin, and the strong 
pelvic arch is more vertical in its direction ; the 
extremities are generally shorter and more mas- 
sive, and the separate bones more completely 
formed, than in the former groups of quadrupeds. 
The ulna and the fibula being developed through- 
out, and four toes at least, generally reaching the 
ground on all extremities.”* They are, as poetically 
* Grant’s Outlines, p. 105. 
