104 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
boos, and other grasses, they constitute a subordinate part only of 
the food of the wild animal. When he makes a raid into cultivated 
tracts, he commits great havock upon sugar cane, rice fields, plan¬ 
tains, and many other cultivated plants but these incidents form 
only interludes in his established alimentary habits. His dung in 
the wild state, commonly presents a large proportion of contused and 
undigested woody fibre, in a stringy form, mixed up with other 
vegetable tissues. 
It is difficult to conceive of a mechanism better adapted to the 
duty which they have to perform than is presented by the molars of 
the Indian Elephant. Taking the three true molars, which serve 
during the adult stage of the animal, they are composed successively 
of 12, 16, and 24 ridges. Each ridge has the core formed of a high 
wedge-shaped plate of ivory; a continuous plate of enamel is closely 
folded over these wedges, which are confluent at their base; and the 
intervals between the ridges are filled up, each with a reversed wedge 
of cement, which is insinuated between the grooves and inequalities 
of the enamel. When the crown is in full activity of wear, the 
penultimate molar, consisting of sixteen ridges, presents an unequal 
triturating surface, composed of thirty-two plates of enamel, alter¬ 
nating with sixteen thin wedges of ivory and as many of cement, 
making in all sixty-four alternations, disposed within a length of 
from 8J to 9J inches. The disintegrating and bruising power of the 
surface is further greatly augmented by the circumstance, that, in 
the Asiatic Elephant, the plates of enamel are folded vertically into 
a number of bold close-set zig-zags, or undulations, which present a 
crimped edge during wear. If a number of these plates were brought 
together, so as to place their undulations in contact, an appearance 
would be produced, analogous on a large scale, to the engine-turning 
of a watch-case, arranged in longitudinal lines. The three constituent 
materials being of unequal hardness, the cement is worn lowest, the 
enamel highest, and the ivory to a level between the two. A con¬ 
stant equilibrium is maintained, in the normal state, between the 
nature of the food, the waste of the crown-surface, the absorption of 
the fangs, the forward movement of the body of the tooth, and the 
replacement of the worn out portion by a succession of fresh plates, 
protruded from behind. 
This goes on in the wild state, but no sooner is the animal kept 
in captivity than the balance is upset, and the whole mechanism 
put out of gear. Instead of grass culms and leaves charged with sili- 
cious crystals, or mechanically mixed with sand, and of tough woody 
fibre and bark, requiring a powerful process of trituration to fit them 
for deglutition, the animal is supplied with concentrated cereal food 
and hay, with an admixture of nutritious roots and mashes, or green 
fodder. The consequence is, that the crowns of the active molars 
* Corse, Asiat. Research. Yol. iii. p. 229 . 
