106 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
The Elephants kept in the menageries in Europe are all, more or 
less, in this morbid condition of the dental system. They are fed on 
rations composed largely of turnips, carrots, mango]d-wurzel, and of 
mashes of boiled rice, bran, sea-biscuit, and chaff, &c. The only 
hard and dry food issued to them, consists of a truss or two of hay, 
and the straw used for their litter. Ligneous food, such as they 
partly live upon in the wild state, is denied to them, and the results 
are so certain, that one can anywhere point out in a museum, the 
molar of an Elephant which has been kept in captivity. Eor obvious 
reasons, the effects, although still discernible, are less pronounced 
in the molars of Elephants which have been retained in bondage in 
their native country. 
The bearing of these observations upon the normal condition of 
teeth of the Mammoth, and its inferred alimentary habits, will be 
shown in the sequel. 
( b .) Food of the African Elephant. —The alimentary habits of the 
Indian species are so well know T n, simply from the fact, that being 
tamed, one can observe from his back, in beating through his native 
jungles, every thing which he selects, and all that he passes by. The 
same close observation can not be applied to the African form, as, at 
the present day, he is nowhere in his native continent trained for the 
use of man. Our knowledge of his food is, therefore, of a vague and 
general character, being derived from the cursory observation of tra¬ 
vellers, whose attention was not specially directed to the subject. 
The molar teeth of the African Elephant are intermediate, in con¬ 
struction and triturating characters, between those of the Euelepliantes , 
or Elephants Proper, and the fossil Stegodons. They present, in the 
three intermediate and last molars for the ridge-formula, the succes¬ 
sive ciphers 7 : 7, 8, 10; while E. antiquus, presents the ciphers 10: 
10, 12, 16, and E. primigenius and E. Indicus , 12 : 12, 16, 24. The 
aggregate of the series of ridges in the first amounts only to 32 ; in 
the second to 48 ; and in the two last to 64; involving a great differ¬ 
ence in the triturating mechanism of the teeth. In the African form 
the molars are also shorter, narrower, and of less elevation, than in 
the Asiatic species. The discs of wear, instead of the narrow trans¬ 
verse bands seen in the latter, exhibit the well-known rhomboidal 
expansion characteristic of the species. Instead, therefore, of being 
adapted to contuse and triturate the branches and twigs of trees, they 
are better suited for squeezing and crushing leaves, and succulent 
stems or roots. The habits of the animal, as observed by travellers, 
are in accordance with these indications. Besides browsing on the 
foliage of the Mimosas and Acacias, which abound in Southern 
Africa, they tear up the trees of certain species of these genera by 
the roots, aided, according to Pringle, by their tusk, used as a crow¬ 
bar (P), and they devour the succulent parts of these roots in the in¬ 
verted treesA Burchell mentions a small species of Erosopis , JR. Ele- 
[* Cited in the ‘ Library of Entertaining Knowledge.’ Menageries, Yol. ii. p. 36. 
