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. E. 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 vertebra. Finally, the numbers of dorsal vertebræ and pairs of ribs are different in 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 lamina of the teeth afford another distinction, which, however, is less apparent to the eye than that taken from the number of the vertebræ. These lamina, 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.*

The differences which we pointed out 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.

In their external form also the two Asiatic Elephants appear to present some differences. Heer Westerman, Director of the Gardens of the Zoological Society of Amsterdam, which has for several years possessed two female elephants of middling age, one from Calcutta and the other from Sumatra, informs me, on this subject, that the Sumatran example is more slender and more finely built than the Bengalese, that it has a longer and thinner snout, and that the rump at the end is more broadened and covered with longer and stronger hairs, in which respect it reminds one rather of the African than the Indian Elephant, and lastly that the Sumatran animal is more remarkable for its intellectual development than the Indian.

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The last mentioned observation agrees in a remarkable way with what Heer Diard has lately written concerning the Elephant of Ceylon. He says, on this matter, "l'Elephant de Ceylon se dis"tingue de celui des Indes par une aptitude d'intelligence instinctive, celle de facile éducabilité aussi ces elephans de Ceylon, de "tout temps recherchés par les Princes de l'Inde se trouvent l'être encore aujourdhui plus qu' aucun autre par les Anglais pour les "differens services auxquels on les employe. J'ai eu l'occasion "d'observer plusieurs grandes troupes de ces animaux et une particulièrement, qui avait fini par se laisser prendre dans une grande "enceinte établie par les ordres du Gouvernement, qui à cette époque où la guerre de l'Inde etait encore loin d'etre terminée "faisait tout ce qu'il est possible pour recruter un certain nombre de ces animaux afin de les diriger vers le Bengale."

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When we collect what is known respecting the distribution of both species of Asiatic Elephants, it seems that this animal is met with eastward of the Indus throughout the whole of Hindostan, Bengal, and the wide districts of Further India to Siam and CochinChina, and also on the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra; that one of the species, E. sumatranus, has only yet been met with on the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra, whilst the so-called Indian Elephant has been brought to Europe exclusively from Continental India.

So far as I can discover, the greater number of Elephants brought to Europe from Continental India, have been obtained from Bengal. It remains therefore a question, whether all the Elephants of Continental India belong really to one species, or whether, in these widely extended regions, there may not be different species of Elephants, and the Elephant of Trans-gangetic India may not perhaps belong to E. sumatranus. A similar question may be asked with respect to the Elephant of Southern India, compared with the E. sumatranus of Ceylon, since these districts approach one another very nearly. We have, it is true, no more reasons for answer

The whole area of the distribution of the Asiatic Elephants is, on the globe, embraced in a district of the form of an elongated quadrangle of 40 degrees in length and 25 in breadth, of which about half is taken up by sea. It lies between 65° and

105° E. L. and from N. to S. extends from about 35° and 25° N. to 5o S.

ing these questions in the affirmative than the negative, but they must be determined by ascertaining the facts, in order to know the exact boundaries of the range of E. indicus.*

If, as we have reason to believe is the case, the Elephant of Southern India agrees with that of Bengal, then the phenomenon that the Ceylonese animal belongs to another species, and that species the Sumatran, is certainly very remarkable. The Fauna of Ceylon shows, it is true, in some respects, differences from that of Southern India; one of the most noticeable of which is, that not one of the Monkeys living upon this island is identical with those of India. Nevertheless the Fauna of Ceylon agrees much better with that of India than with that of Sumatra, where not only entirely different species, but even other forms of Monkeys occur (e. g. the Orangoutang, several Gibbons, amongst which is the abnormal Hylobates syndactylus, the Galeopithecus, &c.) and which island besides produces, to mention some of the larger species, a Rhinoceros, the Indian Tapir, a very different species of Bos and of Moschus, an Antelope, the Argus, Polyplectron, several very peculiar species of Hornbill, (e. g. Buceros bicornis, and B. galeatus), and many other species and genera, which are not met with in Ceylon. It would be, however, anticipating the progress of science, when, as now, so small a quantity of incomplete materials are before us, to make comparisons between the Faunas of these countries, and it would be still more precipitate to attempt to draw general conclusions therefrom.+

If we take into consideration at once the size of the lamina of

The works of Naturalists and travellers throw no light upon this subject. Corse (Phil. Trans. 1799, p. 245) it is true, tells us that the Bengalese distinguish three races of Elephants-Mooknah, Dauntelah and Komarea; but the distinctions which he gives of these races, seem to refer exclusively to the lesser or greater size and the form of the tusks. But we know how much the tusks of this animal vary according to the sex and the individual, and that these teeth sometimes, even in old females, acquire a considerable size.

I think the attention of Naturalists ought to be turned also to the Elephants of the different parts of Africa. We meet, among the skulls from this Continent, with some which, as regards the extraordinary shortness of the tusk-jaw-bones, are proportionately shorter and much broader than is generally the case. Such a skull is figured by Cuvier, (Oss. Foss. I. pl. 4, fig. 2), whereas on the same plate, (fig. 10) the usual form of the skull of the African Elephant is represented. That this difference is not sexual I have repeatedly observed: one might therefore suppose that the individual, the skull of which has such a remarkably contracted form, belongs to another variety or species. All the South African Elephants, that I have seen, belong to the ordinary form. I do not know the locality of the short skull. It would be very desirable to compare the Elephants from different parts of Africa, in order to know with certainty whether they are all identical, or show local differences. The latter is not impossible, since most animals from the two chief divisions of Africa differ specifically from one another, or at least show differences in size, &c., as, for example, is the case with the Ostrich of Algeria and that of South Africa. In every case it is remarkable, that the area of Asia tenanted by the Elephant is ten times smaller than Africa, and that this area embraces two species, whilst the African Elephant is spread over the whole Continent-that is, over an area ten times as great as that of the two Asiatic species together,

In

the teeth, in the different species of Elephant, and the numbers of the ribs and dorsal vertebra, we obtain the remarkable result that, as the latter numbers decrease, the lamina become narrower. E. africanus these lamina are widest, and here we also find the greatest number of dorsal vertebræ and pairs of ribs: E. sumatranus, in which the laminæ are narrower, has twenty dorsal vertebræ and pairs of ribs: E. indicus, in which they are still narrower, only nineteen. In the Mammoth, (E. primigenius) where they are narrowest of all, the number of dorsal vertebræ and ribs, appears to be only eighteen.*

As the conclusion of this short notice, we may remark that Cuvier, by neglecting to compare together specimens of the different species of Elephants, and to attend to the numbers of their dorsal vertebræ and ribs, deprived himself of the discovery of the third living species of Elephant, and thereby missed a principal argument for his assertion, that E. primigenius belonged to a different species from those now in existence. Had he not lost this piece of evidence he would have obtained an overbearing argument in the last-named question, and Naturalists would have become acquainted with the existence of a third species of Elephant, half a century sooner.

VIII. OBSERVATIONS ON SOME AUSTRALIAN AND

FEEGEEAN

HETEROCYATHI AND THEIR PARASITICAL SIPUNCULUS. By John
Denis Macdonald, R.N., F.R.S., Surgeon of H. M.S. "Icarus."

In two separate casts of the lead off the Bellona Reef, Lat. 21. 51. S., Long. 159. 28. E., we obtained specimens of living Polypi, referable, as Dr. Gray has since very kindly informed me, to the genus Heterocyathus, and on comparing them with others previously collected by me in the Feegee group, I found that they were specifically different, though obviously belonging to the same genus.

The corallum is simple, free, depressed, broad and flattened at the base, becoming smaller towards the calyx or oval disc, which is more or less oval in figure, and comparatively shallow, with a welldeveloped septal system following the regnant number six.

The septa are disposed in three sets, or whorls, according to the order of their development, viz. a primary set, which is most prominent and made up of six or twelve members, a secondary, equal in number and alternating with these, and a tertiary set, of double that number and alternating with the other two. The primary septa have, on either side, a thin sub-parallel lamina, with which they are blended at the thecal margin, being only connected with them internally by means

That the Mastodons form, not a diverging, but a parallel series with the Elephants, seems evident from the wholly different form of their tusks, also from the fact that the Mastodon giganteus has only twenty dorsal vertebræ and an equal number of ribs-that is less than E africanus-whilst the knobs of the teeth are far larger than those of the last-named animal.

of the columella. The secondary septa are furnished with lamina of the same description, which join those of the first set, at an acute angle, without reaching the columella; and the tertiary septa pass into this point of union, having no supplementary lamina of their The two sets of plates, just noticed, present a rounded shoulder internally (more prominent in the primary ones) giving them the character of lateral pali, or dismemberments of the septa.

The columella is composed of a spongy tissue, with an oval and slightly convex summit.

All the plates of the disk are spongy, or minutely granular, on the surface, but compact within. The body of the corallum is spongy at the axis, in continuity with the columella, more compact below and around this, and again more porous towards the exterior, especially above.

The loculi are circumscribed, but not crossed by synapticule or interseptal dissepiments. They are just double the number of the septa, lying one on either side of the latter, and are thus arranged by pairs in three distinct circles; the internal corresponding with the primary, the middle with the secondary, and the external with the tertiary rays.

In the species taken at the Bellona Shoals the oral disk was distorted, with a central constriction, as though a process of fission had been going forward. In one specimen indeed the opposite margins of the disk had actually coalesced. The primary septa were twelve in number, and all the plates are so much compressed that the loculi are exceedingly narrow. The external surface of the corallum is beset with minute granulations disposed in broken longitudinal lines with porous channels between them; on the other hand, in the Feegeean species the disk is regular, with six primary rays and wider loculi, and the external surface of the corallum is coarsely granulated, without any very obvious linear disposition, as the first rudiments of

costa.

In a recent visit to Moreton Bay we dredged (in a few fathoms depth) two beautiful specimens of another species of this genus, differing from the foregoing in having well marked longitudinal costa, exactly forty-eight in number, and corresponding, each for each, with all the radiating septa and lamine, with which they are directly continuous at the margin of the disk. The principal lamine are falcate towards the hollow of the cup and deeply notched, toothed and echinate, as they pass into the spongy columella, whose actual limit is thus rendered less definite than in the other species described.

Of the soft parts of these polyps, I can say but little. They appear to be very scanty, from the fact, that when the animals are immediately taken from the water there is scarcely anything to be seen but a brown, soft and tenacious matter, filling up the crevices of the skeleton above described, and all the prominent points and ridges become quite bare. The whole surface of the corallum is covered over with a thin ectodermic layer, which however is much worn at the