ship in which most of H. Diard's specimens were sent to Europe, received so much damage at sea near the Mauritius, that the goods were mostly trans-shipped, and sent in another vessel to Europe. It thus happened that she did not arrive in the Netherlands until two years after she had quitted Ceylon, and then with the news that the cask containing one of the young Elephants had been obliged to be thrown overboard, having become decomposed. A better fate awaited the second cask, containing the other young individual, which had been destined for Professor Owen of London; and this and the skin and skeleton of the old male Elephant, as also the skull of the old female reached us well preserved. These are now in the National Museum at Leyden, and, as an accurate investigation has convinced me, differ in no respect from our examples of the Sumatran Elephant, thus belonging to this species, and differing in the following particulars from Elephas indicus.
The Elephant of Sumatra and Ceylon, (Elephas sumatranus) has small ears like E. indicus, and approaches this species also in the form of its skull, and the number of the caudal vertebræ; but the laminæ of its teeth are wider, and in the number of its dorsal vertebræ and pairs of ribs it differs from both the other known species. As far as we know, there are seven cervical, three lumbar and four sacral vertebræ in all the species of Elephas alike. H. sumatranus and E. indicus agree in the number of caudal vertebræ, which is usually thirty-three, but in very young examples sometimes only thirty. In E. africanus, on the other hand, the tail never contains more than twenty-six vertebræ. Finally, the numbers of dorsal vertebræ and pairs of ribs are different m each of the three living species of Elephant, being in E. africanus twenty-one, in E. sumatranus twenty, and in E. indicus nineteen.
It is also remarkable, that the number of true ribs is alike in all the species, that is, only five; whilst in the three species, as above given, the corresponding numbers of false ribs are fifteen, fourteen and thirteen. Hence it follows that the augmentation of these parts in the different species, takes place in the direction of the hindermost dorsal vertebra and pair of ribs.
The laminæ of the teeth afford another distinction, which, however, is less apparent to the eye than that taken from the number of the vertebræ. These laminæ, or bands, in E. sumatranus are wider (or if one may so say, broader in the direction of the long axis of the teeth) than in E. indicus. In making this comparison one must remark that the distinction is less evident in younger individuals, and that there are met with in all species of Elephants, within certain definite limits, remarkable individual differences in respect of the width of these laminæ.[1]
- ↑ The differences which we pointed oat as existing between the skulls of the two sorts of Asiatic Elephants, in Temminck's Coup d'œil, (II. p. 9, note), seem, now that we have examined a greater number of examples, not to be constant.
