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Show 1879.] MR. W. A. FORBES ON THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 421 of Portugal, and lived from 1668 to 1681 at Versailles, when it died and came into his hands for dissection'. In his memoir on this specimen (which extends over fifty pages) the anatomy of most of the soft parts is described, though, as a rule, somewhat briefly, that of the trunk, structure of the nasal organs, and female reproductive organs only being described at greater length. In the following account I shall make reference, where necessary, to Perrault's figures and descriptions under the organs described2. Within the last fifteen years African Elephants have been imported in considerable numbers from Nubia and other parts of the Upper- Nile basin, via. Egypt and Trieste into Europe3. Altogether considerably more than a hundred must have reached Europe alive; but although some of these must surely, ere now, have fallen victims to the numerous diseases that attack animals in captivity, nothing, as far as I can learn, has been published on the anatomy of any of these animals till the current year. In the first part of the ' Archiv fiir Naturgeschichte' for the present year (1879), Dr. August von Mojsisovics, of Gratz, has published an article " Zur Kenntniss des afrikanischen Elephanten,"4 in which he describes certain portions only of the visceral anatomy-namely, the structure of the pharynx, particularly as regards the existence of a " pharyngeal pouch" (hereafter to be alluded to), and of the bronchi, the pancreas and pancreatic duct, and the male genital organs ; and of these figures are given on three plates. During the past winter one of the African Elephants in the possession of the Alexandra Palace Company succumbed to the severity of the weather. By the courtesy of Mr. Jones, the Secretary of the Company, the body was made over to Mr. Bartlett, and was sent up to the Society's Gardens so as to be more easily examined5. As our anatomical knowledge of this species is still so rudimentary, I make no hesitation in laying before the Society the following notes on such parts of its anatomy as I examined, the more so as the very considerable differences which occur in the various accounts of those 1 This animal was a female, and was supposed to be, when it arrived in Paris, about four years old. (It was probably much older.) It was then 7£ feet high, but during the thirteen years it lived at Versailles only grew 1 foot in height. M. Perrault gives a figure of this specimen on pi. 19 of his memoir; this figure clearly shows the enormous ears characteristic of the African Elephant, but is very defective as regards the hind, and particularly the fore, feet. 2 Besides this, there are a few short statements on various parts of the anatomy of E. africanus in Prof. Flower's lectures on the digestive organs of Mammalia (alluded to below) and in Prof. Macalister's recently published ' Morphology of Vertebrata.' Donitz has described the kidney (Reichert & D u Bois-Reymond's Archiv, 1872, p. 85). 3 For an account of the introduction of African Elephants into Europe, see a letter by Carl Hagenbeck, the well-known animal-dealer of Hamburg, in ' Land and Water,' March 29, 1879. 4 L. c. pp. 56-92, t. v-vii. * 8 Unfortunately this was not effected till about one week alter the death of the animal. This fact, as well as the deaths of several other large animals requiring examination at the same period, made the preliminary dissections rather hurried, and must be an excuse for any errors or omissions in the following descriptions. |