212 REPORT—1843. 
specimen figured by Cuvier, and which is equally presented by that of the 
Mammoth of Auvergne, figured by the Abbé Croizet *, and by that described 
by Nesti +. 
Both these authors being unacquainted with the intermediate varieties, in- 
cline to regard the Mammoth with the thick-plated molars as a distinct species, 
which V. Meyer in his work cites as the Elephas meridionalis. In regard, 
however, to the proposed distinctive name, I may remark that the variety of 
molar on which this species is founded occurs not only in England, but in 
Siberia, and as far north as Eschscholtz Bay. 
Most of the molars of the Mammoth from North America are characterized 
by thinner and more numerous plates than those of England, but the differ- 
ence is not constant. The Mammoth’s molar from the Norfolk coast in the 
collection of Miss Gurney, which shows nineteen plates in a length of 10 
inches, equals several of the molars from North America in the number of 
the plates. An upper molar of a Mammoth from the gravel of Ballingdon, 
with a total antero-posterior diameter of 7 inches, consists of twenty plates. 
Mr. Parkinson cites a molar, now in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, 
from Wellsbourne in Warwickshire, in which twenty plates exist in a length 
of 64 inches ; and he figures another molar from the till of Essex, which, in a 
length of 83 inches, contains twenty-four plates. On the other hand, the 
molars of the Mammoths from Eschscholtz Bay, North America, figured by 
Dr. Buckland, manifest the same kind of variety as those from the English 
drift ; one with a grinding surface 73 inches long, exhibiting nineteen plates, 
whilst another in the same extent of grinding surface shows only thirteen 
plates ; both these teeth are from lower jaws, which, like the lower jaw con- 
taining the broader-plated tooth described by Prof. Nesti, are precisely simi- 
lar in form to the other fossil jaws of the Mammoth; they present the same 
specific differences from the Asiatic Elephant, and offer no modification that 
can be regarded as specifically distinct from the Mammoth’s jaws with nar- 
row-plated molars of Siberia or Ohio. 
Mr. Parkinson has figured a Mammoth’s molar from Staffordshire, which 
he deemed to differ from every other that had come to his knowledge in the 
great thickness of the plates, the smoothness of the sides of the line of ena- 
mel, and the appearance of the digitated part of the plates even in the anterior 
part of the tooth}. 
This specimen, which is now in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, is 
the posterior part of a large grinder of an old Mammoth. The superior thick- 
ness of the plates arises from the circumstance of the posterior plates being 
thicker than the anterior ones; these thick plates are more deeply cleft, or 
their digitated summits are longer, and advance further forward upon the 
grinding surface of the molar before they are worn down to their common 
base ; they appear also in the specimen to be more advanced than they really 
are, because of the deficiency of the fore-part of the tooth, which has been 
broken away. In my opinion this molar has the characters of the thick-plated 
variety, simply exaggerated from the accidents of age and mutilation above- 
mentioned. It manifests the more constant and characteristic modifications 
of the Elephas primigenius in its relative breadth, and, notwithstanding their 
thickness, in the number of the plates (nine), which have been exposed by 
attrition. I have seen a very similar molar of the Mammoth from the Norfolk 
freshwater deposits in the collection of Mr. Fitch of Norwich. 
The abraded summits of the component plates of the Mammoth’s molars 
most commonly present a slight expansion, often lozenge-shaped, at their 
* Fossiles du Puy-de-Dome, p. 125. pl. 3. fig. 1. 
t+ Nuoy. Giorn. d, Letter. 1825, p. 195. { Organic Remains, iii. p. 344, 
