FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
93 
The distinguished Dutch zoologist further states, that all the Indian 
Elephants which he had examined, had, without exception, only 19 
dorsal vertebrae and 19 pairs of ribs. That this is occasionally or 
even frequently the case, is beyond doubt, from the corroborative 
evidence of Patrick Blair, Meckel, Warren, and others. Eor, as re¬ 
marked by Camper, it is highly improbable that a dorsal vertebra 
should have disappeared in boiling the bones, preparatory to setting 
them up. But it is by no means equally certain that the number is 
constantly limited, in the Indian form, to nineteen. Professor Schle- 
gel cites the case of the Duvaucel skeleton, forwarded from Bengal 
to Paris, in which there are twenty dorsal vertebrae.* But he tries 
to get over the difficulty of this exceptional case, by the hypothesis, 
that the live animal may have been imported from Ceylon into Ben¬ 
gal. I will mention in the sequel, the reasons, founded upon many 
years’ residence there, why I consider the assumption to be in the 
highest degree improbable. It is rare to find the skeleton of an 
Asiatic Elephant in England, the pedigree of which is so well authen¬ 
ticated, as to be beyond conjectures of this kind. But there is one 
in London, the antecedents of which are well known, being the ske¬ 
leton of the celebrated male Elephant, ‘ Choonee ,’ preserved in the 
Museum of the College of Surgeons. The young animal was im¬ 
ported from Bengal in the year 1810, on board the the E. I. C. ship 
‘ Astell,’ by Capt. Hay;+ and in 1826 it was shot, in the menagerie at 
Exeter-Exchange, in consequence of its violence from sexual excite¬ 
ment. It bore an Indian name, ‘ Choonee,’ and on the occasion of 
its slaughter, it obeyed the word of command to lie down, given to 
it by its English keeper, in the language of Hindostan. All the 
antecedents are here consistent in proof that the animal was of a 
Bengal stock. I have examined the skeleton closely, and find that 
it has 7 cervical, 20 dorsal, 3 lumbar, 4 sacral vertebrae; and 20 
pairs of ribs. The last or nineteenth pair have been lost, or omitted 
in mounting the skeleton. The twentieth dorsal vertebra presents 
costal articular cups, which are unsymmetrical and small: that, on 
the right side, not much exceeding the size of a silver sixpence. But 
the vertebra is distinctly present. This case, coupled with the Du¬ 
vaucel skeleton, in the ‘ Jar din des Plantes,’ seems to establish, with¬ 
out searching for others, that the continental Elephant of Northern 
India varies in the number of its dorsal vertebrae from 19 to 20, as 
the African varies from 20 to 21. J 
The hypothesis entertained by Professor Schlegel, upon the state¬ 
ment of Diard, that Ceylon Elephants are frequently imported into 
* Nat. Hist. Review, ii. p. 74. 
f Griffith’s “ Animal Kingdom,” Vol. iii. p. 348 ; and Hone’s “ Every Day 
Book, &c.” Vol. ii. p. 322. 
J The ingenious view advanced by Prof. Schlegel regarding the inverse 
relation, between the number of lamince in the molars, and the number of dorsal 
vertebras in the different species (supra, p. 89), does not appear to be tenable against 
