240 PROBOSCIDIA. 
ward 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 attrition. It manifests the 
more constant and characteristic modifications of the H/e- 
phas primigenius in its relative breadth, and, notwithstand- 
ing their thickness, in the number of the plates (nine), 
which have been exposed by the act of mastication. 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 margins of the component plates of the 
Mammoth’s molars most commonly present a slight expan- 
sion, often lozenge-shaped, at their centre; they are divided 
with more regularity, in general, than those in the Indian 
Elephant, into three digital processes, the middle being 
usually the broadest and thickest, and having its summit 
originally sub-divided into three smaller digitations, as 
is shown in the posterior plates of fig. 90. The greater 
thickness of the middle division of the transverse plate 
occasions the middle expansion of the margin of the plate, 
when the three digitations are worn down to their common 
base. Only in one small molar, from the brick-earth at 
Grays, Essex, in the collection of Mr. Wickham Flower, 
have I seen the median rhomboidal dilatation, extending, in 
the abraded plates, so near the end of the section as to 
approximate the characteristic shape of the plates of the 
African Elephant’s molar ; from which, however, the fossil 
was far removed by its thinner and more numerous plates. 
The fictitious character of the Llephas priscus of Goldfuss 
