feet, and leaving a hollow for the percolation of the spring. But as the
weight of the elephant would force in the side if left perpendicular,
one approach is always formed with such a gradient that he can reach the
water with his trunk without disturbing the surrounding sand.

[Footnote 1: This peculiarity was known in the middle ages, and PHILE,
writing in the fourteenth century, says, that such is his _preference_,
for muddy water that the elephant _stirs it_ before he drinks.

[Greek:

"Ydor de pineisynchythen prin anpinoi
To gar dieides akribos diaptuei."]

--PHILE _de Eleph_., i. 144.]

[Footnote 2: A tame elephant, when taken by his keepers to be bathed,
and to have his skin washed and rubbed, lies down on his side, pressing
his head to the bottom under water, with only the top of his trunk
protruded, to breathe.]

[Illustration]

I have reason to believe, although the fact has not been authoritatively
stated by naturalists, that the stomach of the elephant will be found to
include a section analogous to that possessed by some of the ruminants,
calculated to contain a supply of water as a provision against
emergencies. The fact of his being enabled to retain a quantity of water
and discharge it at pleasure has been long known to every observer of
the habits of the animal; but the proboscis has always been supposed to
be "his water-reservoir,"[1] and the theory of an internal receptacle
has not been discussed. The truth is that the anatomy of the elephant is
even yet but imperfectly understood[2], and, although some peculiarities
of his stomach were observed at an early period, and even their
configuration described, the function of the abnormal portion remained
undetermined, and has been only recently conjectured. An elephant which
belonged to Louis XIV. died at Versailles in 1681 at the age of
seventeen, and an account of its dissection was published in the
_Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire Naturelle_, under the authority of
the Academy of Sciences, in which the unusual appendages of the stomach
are pointed out with sufficient particularity, but no suggestion is made
as to their probable uses."[3]

[Footnote 1: BRODERIP'S _Zoological Recreations_, p. 259.]

[Footnote 2: For observing the osteology of the elephant, materials are
of course abundant in the indestructible remains of the animal: but the
study of the intestines, and the dissection of the softer parts by
comparative anatomist