[Footnote 1:  “L’extremite voisine du cardia se termine par une poche tres-considerable et doublee a l’interieure du quatorze valvules orbiculaires que semblent en faire une espece de division particuliere.”—­CAMPER, Description Anatomique d’un Elephant Male, p. 37, tabl.  IX.]

[Footnote 2:  “The elephant has another peculiarity in the internal structure of the stomach.  It is longer and narrower than that of most animals.  The cuticular membrane of the oesophagus terminates at the orifice of the stomach.  At the cardiac end, which is very narrow and pointed at the extremity, the lining is thick and glandular, and is thrown into transverse folds, of which five are broad and nine narrow.  That nearest the orifice of the oesophagus is the broadest, and appears to act occasionally as a valve, so that the part beyond may be considered as an appendage similar to that of the peccary and the hog.  The membrane of the cardiac portion is uniformly smooth; that of the pyloric is thicker and more vascular.”—­Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, by Sir EVERARD HOME, Bart. 4to.  Lond. vol. i. p. 155.  The figure of the elephant’s stomach is given, in his Lectures, vol. ii. plate xviii.]

[Illustration:  ELEPANT’S STOMACH.]

The appendage thus alluded to by Sir EVERARD HOME is the grand “cul-de-sac,” noticed by the Academic des Sciences, and the “division particuliere,” figured by CAMPER.  It is of sufficient dimensions to contain ten gallons of water, and by means of the valve above alluded to, it can be shut off from the chamber devoted to the process of digestion.  Professor OWEN is probably the first who, not from an autopsy, but from the mere inspection of the drawings of CAMPER and HOME, ventured to assert (in lectures hitherto unpublished), that the uses of this section of the elephant’s stomach may be analogous to those ascertained to belong to a somewhat similar arrangement in the stomach of the camel, one cavity of which is exclusively employed as a reservoir for water, and performs no function the preparation of food.[1]

[Footnote 1:  A similar arrangement, with some modifications, has more recently been found in the llama of the Andes, which, like the camel, is used as a beast of burden in the Cordilleras of Chili and Peru; but both these and the camel are ruminants, whilst the elephants belongs to the Pachydermata.]

[Illustration]

Whilst Professor OWEN was advancing this conjecture, another comparative anatomist, from the examination of another portion of the structure of the elephant, was led to a somewhat similar conclusion.  Dr. HARRISON of Dublin had, in 1847, an opportunity of dissecting the body of an elephant which had suddenly died; and in the course of his examination of the thoracic viscera, he observed that an unusually close connection existed between the trachea and oesophagus, which he found to depend on a muscle unnoticed by any previous anatomist, connecting the back of the