210 REPORT—1843. 
ones in the Indian species, the variation which can be detected in any number 
of the grinders of the same size is very slight. 
In the Asiatic Elephant, which, besides the difference in the shape of the 
plates, has always thinner and more numerous plates than the African one, 
a greater amount of variation in both these characters obtains; but it is 
always necessary to bear in mind the caution which Cuvier suggested to 
Camper, that a large molar of an old elephant is not to be compared with a 
small molar of a young one, otherwise there will appear to be a much greater 
discrepancy in the thickness of the plates than really exists in the species; 
and the like caution is still more requisite in the comparison of the molars of 
the Mammoth or fossil Elephant (Alephas primigenius), which, having nor- 
mally more numerous and thinner plates than in the existing Asiatic Elephant, 
present a much greater range of variety. 
Of the extent of this variety in the British fossils some idea may be gained 
by the fact, that in one private collection, that of Miss Gurney of Cromer, of 
fossil Mammalian remains from a restricted locality, there are Mammoth’s 
teeth from the drift of the adjacent coast, one of which, measuring 10 inches 
9 lines in antero-posterior diameter, has nineteen plates, whilst another grinder, 
11 inches in antero-posterior diameter, has only thirteen plates. 
A greater contrast is presented by two grinders of the Mammoth from 
British diluvium in the collection of the late Mr. Parkinson, one of which, 
with a grinding surface of 54 inches in antero-posterior extent, exhibits the 
abraded summits of seventeen plates, whilst the other shows only nine plates 
in the same extent of grinding surface. 
Some paleontologists have viewed these differences as indications of distinct 
species of Elephas. But the vast number of grinders of the Mammoth from 
British strata which have been in my hands in the course of the last three 
years have presented so many intermediate gradations, in the number of 
plates, between the two extremes above cited, that I have not been able to 
draw a well-defined line between the thick-plated and the thin-plated varieties 
of the molar teeth. And if these actually belonged to distinct species of Mam- 
moth, they must have merged into one another, so far as the character of the 
grinding teeth is concerned, in a degree to which the two existing species of 
Elephant, the Indian and African, when compared together, offer no analogy. 
Five or six molars of the Mammoth, and even a greater number, if the 
peculiar changes superinduced by friction on the grinding surface were not 
taken into account, might be selected from such a series as I have above re- 
ferred to, as indications of as many distinct species of Mammoth: such speci- 
mens have been so interpreted by Parkinson, and likewise by Fischer, Gold- 
fuss, Nesti and Croizet, cited in the Paleologica of Hermann VY. Meyer, as 
authorities for eight distinct species of extinct Elephant. 
We must, however, enter more deeply into the consideration of these varie- 
ties, before concluding that the Mammoths which severally exemplify them 
in their molar teeth were distinct species. In the first place, whatever dif- 
ference the molars of the Mammoth from British strata have presented in 
the number of their lamellar divisions, they have corresponded in having a 
greater proportion of these plates on the triturating surface, and likewise, with 
two exceptions, in their greater proportional breadth, than the molars of the 
Asiatic Elephant present. The first exception here alluded to was from the 
diluvial gravel of Staffordshire, and formed part of the collection of Mr. 
Parkinson, the author of the ‘Organic Remains ;’ the second exception was 
from the brick-earth of Essex, and is now in the collection of my friend Mr. 
Brown of Stanway ; this molar, though it combines the thicker plates with the 
narrower form of the entire tooth characteristic of the Indian Elephant, differs 
