The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/412 (page 54)
    enable the animal, at his pleasure, to shorten or to bend certain portions only of his trunk, while the rest remains prolonged, or even bent in a contrary direc- tion. In consequence there is no sort of curve, says Cuvier, which the animal, by their means, cannot give to this instrument. The small muscles which form the interior of the trunk, are all very distinct one from the other; and are all terminated by slender tendons, of which some cross the beds of the longitudinal muscles, to be at- tached to the exterior membrane which covers all the trunk, and others are planted in the membrane of the canals of the trunk. Perrault considered that all these radiated from the canals to the circum- ference, and that they diminished the diameter of the exterior envelope, without diminishing the diameter of the canal. This, however, is not the case: two sets of the muscles have this effect, but the other set certainly lessen the diameter of the canal, al- though their action can never shut the nostrils. All the transverse muscles are plunged in a cellular tissue, uniformly filled with fat. They are the an- tagonists of the longitudinal muscles. Cuvier adds that in their contraction they compel the trunk to elongate entirely, or in part; for their separations enable the animal to exercise them exactly within the limits which he desires. In the preceding para- graph, which is also translated from Cuvier, he assigns to the longitudinal muscles the power of shortening or of bending the trunk entirely, or in part, and he says that “ there is no sort of curve which the animal, by this means, cannot give to this instrument.” We must bear in mind the difference between contraction and elongation. When the lon- gitudinal muscles are. at rest, the trunk remains ex- tended to its natural length; when they are in use it is bent or contracted. But there must be another power