But more conclusive than all, is the discovery to which I have alluded, in relation to the elephant of Ceylon. Down to a very recent period it was universally believed that only two species of the elephant are now in existence, the African and the Asiatic; distinguished by certain peculiarities in the shape of the cranium, the size of the ears, the ridges of the teeth, the number of vertebræ, 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 Général sur les Possessions Néerlandaises dans l'Inde Archipélagique_.] 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 vertebræ, 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 vertebræ (_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 générale du crâne à l'éléphant du continent de l'Asie; mais la partie libre des intermaxillaires est beaucoup plus courte et plus étroite; les cavités nasales sont beaucoup moins larges; l'espace entre les orbites des yeux est plus étroit; la partie postérieur du crâne au contraire est plus large que dans l'espèce du continent.