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EXTRACTS FROM THE FOREIGN PERIODICALS. 
ZOOLOGY. 
1. On the Proboscis of the Elephant; by Dr. Campbell.-— The powers of 
this organ are so wonderful and various, that an inexperienced dissector must fail 
in elucidating its composition. Barring Man, the Elephant must surely be 
considered as the lord of the animal kingdom; largely endowed with intelligence, 
sagacity, and power, it remains chief among the desert wilds, and among the 
numerous creatures devoted to the service of Man. Where is its equal ? Among 
all the organs of sense and motion, the trunk is the most indispensable to the 
preservation of the individual. Eyes, ears, a limb, and generative organs could 
be dispensed with, but deprived of the proboscis, the Elephant in its free state 
could no longer preserve its being; purely herbivorous, and that in the largest 
sense of the word, the formation of the animal is such that he is deprived of 
the mouth as a means of grasping the aliment on which alone he can live. The 
shortness and immobility of the neck prevents him from bringing the mouth 
downwards to seize vegetables little raised from the surface of the earth, and 
the same cause prevents his applying it to the purpose of furnishing himself with 
the leaves of trees and shrubs. Independent of this shortness and limited action 
of the neck, his system of dentition is such as to preclude the possibility of his 
cutting or pulling Grass with the mouth from the ground. The lower jaw with 
incisor teeth sloping outwards, by which the Ruminants are enabled so freely to 
cut their herbivorous food on the ground, is widely different in the Elephant. 
At its inferior part, the lower jaw is narrow and sharp, and without incisor teeth ; 
the lower lip projects considerably beyond the jaw, and the upper jaw is also 
destitute of incisors. All these circumstances show that he never could exist unas¬ 
sisted, without some other means being given to him by which he could bring his food 
under the action of his grinder teeth. This means is the proboscis, and perhaps 
throughout animated nature, it is without a superior, and scarce has an equal among 
corporeal organs; in it are concentrated the organs of touch, the channels to the 
internal olfactory apparatus, the prehensile powers of a noble and huge animal, 
and added to this, it is the external organ of respiration, and is used as a 
pump and reservoir for drawing up and containing the fluid part of its food, then 
passing it into the pharynx. With the proboscis, he is enabled to swim the 
deepest rivers, to bathe and fan himself, and with it he can with equal ease pick 
a pin from the infant fingers of his keeper s child, or fell a forest tree. The 
wonderful propensities of this organ have been long known and acknowledged in 
the east, and the polytheists of India have seldom made such a happy choice of 
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