former with the forepart of the latter, along which the fibres descend and can be distinctly traced to the cardiac orifice of the stomach.  Imperfectly acquainted with the habits and functions of the elephant in a state of nature, Dr. HARRISON found it difficult to pronounce as to the use of this very peculiar structure; but looking to the intimate connection between the mechanism concerned in the functions of respiration and deglutition, and seeing that the proboscis served in a double capacity as an instrument of voice and an organ for the prehension of food, he ventured (apparently without adverting to the abnormal form of the stomach) to express the opinion that this muscle, viewing its attachment to the trachea, might either have some influence in raising the diaphragm, and thereby assisting in expiration, “or that it might raise the cardiac orifice of the stomach, and so aid this organ to regurgitate a portion of its contents into the oesophagus."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Proceed.  Roy.  Irish Acad., vol. iv. p. 133.]

Dr. HARRISON, on the reflection that “we have no satisfactory evidence that the animal ever ruminates,” thought it useless to speculate on the latter supposition as to the action of the newly discovered muscle, and rather inclined to the surmise that it was designed to assist the elephant in producing the remarkable sound through his proboscis known as “trumpeting;” but there is little room to doubt that of the two the rejected hypothesis was the more correct one.  I have elsewhere described the occurrence to which I was myself a witness[1], of elephants inserting their proboscis in their mouths, and withdrawing gallons of water, which could only have been contained in the receptacle figured by CAMPER and HOME, and of which the true uses were discerned by the clear intellect of Professor OWEN.  I was not, till very recently, aware that a similar observation as to the remarkable habit of the elephant, had been made by the author of the Ayeen Akbery, in his account of the Feel Kaneh, or elephant stables of the Emperor Akbar, in which he says, “an elephant frequently with his trunk takes water out of his stomach and sprinkles himself with it, and it is not in the least offensive."[2] FORBES, in his Oriental Memoirs, quotes this passage of the Ayeen Akbery, but without a remark; nor does any European writer with whose works I am acquainted appear to have been cognisant of the peculiarity in question.

[Footnote 1:  In the account of an elephant corral, chap. vi.]

[Footnote 2:  Ayeen Akbery, transl. by GLADWIN, vol i. pt. i, p. 147.]

[Illustration:  WATER-CELLS IN THE STOMACH OF THE CAMEL.]