98 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. 



tainly missing from the front. If the reader will examine A. 

 Leith Adams's monograph on British fossil elephants, plate III, 

 figure 1; plate IV, figure 1; and plate XI, figure 1; or my paper 

 on the "Mammals of the Pleistocene of Iowa" (Iowa Geol. 

 Surv., vol. XXIII), plate LVII, figures 9, 10; plate LV, figure 2; 

 plate LVII, figure 3; and especially plate LXII, figure 4, he will 

 find that a complete lower molar of an elephant possesses a 

 strong anterior root which is distinctly separated from the more 

 or less coalesced hinder roots. This root supports three, four, 

 or possibly five plates. When the tooth is worn down so that 

 this root is gone, one can no longer be certain just how many 

 front plates are missing. That is the condition of Professor 

 Osborn's "neotype. " I examined this tooth before Professor 

 Osborn published his paper; and, without knowing what use he 

 intended to make of it, I noted that it lacked this root and some 

 front plates. The tooth quite certainly belongs to E. columhi, 

 as we have been describing the species. It will be noticed that 

 in Professor Osborn's restoration of the type tooth (his fig. 1) 

 he has not suppHed the front root. 



Having, as he supposed, restricted the name Elephas columhi 

 to a little-known form, Professor Osborn turned his attention 

 to the great body of elephants which he supposed was now left 

 without a specific title, and on these he bestowed the name 

 Elephas jeffersonii. As its type he chose the beautifully pre- 

 served and nearly complete skeleton found in Indiana and now- 

 mounted in the American Museum. To the same species he 

 referred a large skull (No. 10261) found at Cincinnati and now 

 in the U. S. National Museum. Unfortunately, however, for 

 this tribute to our illustrious statesman and naturalist, this 

 Cincinnati skull had previously been described by myself as 

 Elephas boreus. This was done in a paper entitled "Observa- 

 tions on some extinct elephants, " privately issued and widely 

 distributed on June 12, 1922. Professor Osborn's name becomes 

 therefore a synonym. 



It was evidently Professor Osborn's intention to include under 

 E. jeffersonii not only his type, his para types (his fig. 11), and 

 the Cincinnati skull, but the elephants abundantly represented 

 by teeth which have about 7 plates in a 100 mm. fine and thick 

 festooned enamel. In doing this it seems to me that he has 

 ignored almost every character except size of teeth and thickness 



