m, the size of the ears, the
ridges of the teeth, the number of vertebrae, and, according to Cuvier,
in the number of nails on the hind feet. The elephant of Ceylon was
believed to be identical with the elephant of India. But some few years
back, TEMMINCK, in his survey of the Dutch possessions in the Indian
Archipelago[1], announced the fact that the elephant which abounds in
Sumatra (although unknown in the adjacent island of Java), and which had
theretofore been regarded as the same species with the Indian one, has
been recently found to possess peculiarities, in which it differs as
much from the elephant of India, as the latter from its African
congener. On this new species of elephant, to which the natives give the
name of _gadjah_, TEMMINCK has conferred the scientific designation of
the _Elephas Sumatranus_.

[Footnote 1: _Coup d'Oeil General sur les Possessions Neerlandaises dans
l'Inde Archipelagique_.]

The points which entitle it to this distinction he enumerated minutely
in the work[1] before alluded to, but they have been summarized as
follows by Prince Lucien Bonaparte.

[Footnote 1: TEMMINCK, _Coup-d'oeil, &c_., t. i. c. iv. p. 328.; t. ii.
c. iii. p. 91.]

"This species is perfectly intermediate between the Indian and African,
especially in the shape of the skull, and will certainly put an end to
the distinction between _Elephas_ and _Loxodon_, with those who admit
that anatomical genus; since although the crowns of the teeth of _E.
Sumatranus_ are more like the Asiatic animal, still the less numerous
undulated ribbons of enamel are nearly quite as wide as those forming
the lozenges of the African. The number of pairs of false ribs (which
alone vary, the true ones being always six) is fourteen, one less than
in the _Africanus_, _one_ more than in the _Indicus_; and so it is with
the dorsal vertebrae, which are twenty in the _Sumatranus_ (_twenty-one_
and _nineteen_, in the others), whilst the new species agrees with
_Africanus_ in the number of sacral vertebrae (_four_), and with
_Indicus_ in that of the caudal ones, which are _thirty-four_."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Proceed. Zool. Soc. London_, 1849. p. 144, _note_. The
original description of TEMMINCK is as follows:

"Elephas Sumatranus, _Nob_. ressemble, par la forme generale du crane a
l'elephant du continent de l'Asie; mais la partie libre des
intermaxillaires est beaucoup plus courte et plus etroite; les cavites
nasales sont beaucoup moins larges;