I have reason to believe, although the fact has not been authoritatively stated by naturalists, that the stomach of the elephant will be found to include a chamber analogous to that possessed by some of the ruminants, calculated to contain a supply of water as a provision against emergencies. The fact of his being enabled to retain a quantity of water and discharge it at pleasure has been long known to every observer of the habits of the animal; but the proboscis has always been supposed to be “his water-reservoir,”[79] and the theory of an internal receptacle has not been discussed. The truth is that the anatomy of the elephant is even yet but imperfectly understood,[80] and, although some peculiarities of his stomach were observed at an early period by ARISTOTLE and others;[81] and even their configuration described, the function of the abnormal portion remained undetermined, and has been only recently conjectured. An elephant which belonged to Louis XIV. died at Versailles in 1681 at the age of seventeen, and an account of its dissection was published in the _Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire Naturelle_, under the authority of the Academy of Sciences, in which the unusual appendages of the stomach are pointed out with sufficient particularity, but no suggestion is made as to their probable uses.”[82] A writer in the _Quarterly Review_ for December 1850, says that “CAMPER and other comparative anatomists have shown that the left, or cardiac end of the stomach in the elephant is adapted, by several wide folds of lining membrane, to serve as a receiver for water;” but this is scarcely correct, for although CAMPER has accurately figured the external form of the stomach, he disposes of the question of the interior functions with the simple remark that its folds “semblent en faire une espèce de division particulière.”[83] In like manner Sir EVERARD HOME, in his _Lectures on Comparative Anatomy_, has not only carefully described the form of the elephant’s stomach, and furnished a drawing of it even more accurate than CAMPER; but he has equally failed to assign any purpose for so strange a formation; contenting himself with observing that the structure is a peculiarity, and that one of the remarkable folds nearest the orifice of the diaphragm appears to act as a valve, so that the portion beyond may be considered as an appendage similar to that of the hog and the _peccary_.[84] [Illustration: ELEPHANT’S STOMACH.]