Some extremely interesting measurements have been made of the skeleton of the elephant Jumbo, by Professor Ward of Rochester, who compares them, in a pamphlet, with a skeleton of the _Mastodon giganteus_, discovered at Orange County, N.Y. It is too lengthy and technical to be introduced in this connection. The measurements already given are sufficient to show that the elephants of over eleven or twelve feet are extremely rare, while those of eighteen and twenty belong to the world of fiction. The absence of joints was a feature of the elephant, according to some of the old writers. Sir Thomas Browne, in his “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” says, “It hath no joynts;” and “being unable to lye down, it lieth against a tree, which the hunters observing doe saw almost asunder, whereon the beast relying, by the fall of the tree falls also downe itselfe, and is able to rise no more.” Sir Thomas thinks that “the hint and ground of this opinion might be the grosse and somewhat cylindrical composure of the legs of the elephant, and the equality and less perceptible disposure of the joynts, especially in the fore-legs of the animal, they appearing, when he standeth, like pillars of flesh.” The honor of discovering jointless animals belongs properly to Pliny, who described the _machlis_, a Scandinavian animal without joints. Cæsar, in describing the wild animals of the Hercynian forests, mentions the alce, “in color and configuration approaching the goat, but surpassing it in size, its head destitute of horns, and its limbs of joints.” It is evident that Aristotle had some doubt as to whether elephants possessed joints in their knees; and Ælian, writing two hundred years later, perpetuated the error, expressing his surprise that the elephants in Rome could dance, when they had no joints. This fiction was taken up by the poets of the time, and is found in many old writings. Phile, a contemporary of Dante, addressed a poem on the elephant to the Emperor Andross II., in which he expressed the same belief; and Solinus introduced it into his fable “Polyhistor.” Though the error was corrected in the year 802, it was revived by Matthew Paris in the thirteenth century, who made a drawing of the elephant presented to King Henry III. by the King of France, in 1255. The animal was represented without joints. Shakspeare was a victim to the popular belief, and says in “Troilus and Cressida,”— “The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy. His legs are for necessity, not for flexure.” Donne, in his “Progress of a Soul,” sang of nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,— “The only harmless great thing. Yet nature hath given him no knee to bend. Himself he up-props, on himself relies; Still sleeping stands.” I have previously referred to the fact that the mammoth was considered by the Chinese to be an underground, rat-like creature; and in many countries the bones of fossil elephants have been considered those of giants.