Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants, 21 



find the heads of a male and female fossil elephant, we must 

 not mistake them for two different species." 



Dissection has shown us, however, that this protuberance 

 was only produced by two cartilages peculiar to elephants, 

 which cover the entrance of the canals of the proboscis into 

 the osseous nostrils. 



These cartilages were a little more swelled in this indi- 

 vidual than in the others. 



It is not even a character common to all males. The 

 dauntelah of Bengal had it not. 



The same learned geologist has given to his figures much 

 larger tusks than these two individuals had in reality, ^^ In 

 order," he says, p. 26j^, ^^ to make those understand, who 

 never saw an elephant, the manner in which these animal* 

 carry their tusks." It was not necessary, however, to give 

 large tusks to the female, which never has any in the Indian 

 species. 



Article VIII. 



Examinatioji of the Cranium of the fossil Elephant, 



The cranium was very cellular 3 the osseous laminas com- 

 posing it were too thin to be preserved in the fossil state : 

 they are therefore found in innumerable fragments ; but 

 three only are mentioned as being in a state of good preser- 

 vation, and the most entire of the whole wants a part of 

 the occiput. 



They belong to the Petersburgh Academy * ; the best 

 was found upon the banks of the river Indigirska, in the 

 most eastern and coldest part of Siberia, by the learned and 

 intrepid Messerschniidt of Dantzick, who gave a drawing 

 of it to his countryman Breynius. The latter had it en- 

 graved at the end of a memoir he inserted in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions fj and to this day it is the only public 

 document ne have upon this part of the skeleton of the 

 fossil elephant. 



I have copied the figure of Breynius in PI. ii. fig. \, be- 

 sides the African and Indian crania; and I have reduced 

 the three to the same size nearly, in order to facilitate their 



* Pallae, Noy.Com. Petrop. xui. | Vol. xl. n. 446, pi. i. and Ji. 



B 3 comparison. 



