ch 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HOME, ventured to assert (in lectures hitherto unpublished), that the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
former with the forepart of the latter, along which th