743 ye PROBOSSIDIA. 
other shows only nine plates in the same extent of grind- 
ing surface. 
Some paleontologists have viewed these differences as 
indications of distinct species of Hlephas. 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 varieties actually belonged to dis- 
tinct species of Mammoth, those species must have merged 
Fig. 88, Fig. 89. 
JS 
< MiG Dip 
4 de iN 
ih 
African Elephant. + nat. size. Asiatic Elephant. 
& 
