MASTODON 359 



Eppelsheim specimen. Whether such difference be valid for 

 a specific distinction may be doubted ; but that Cuvier 

 assigned the name angustidcns to a Mastodon with narrower 

 molars than the M. giganteus, which had a quadri-tuberculate 

 premolar, a penultimate molar of four principal divisions and 

 a talon, and a last molar with five principal divisions and a 

 talon, is certain. To that Mastodon, therefore, which has the 

 same shaped and sized ultimate and penultimate true molars 

 and premolar, the same name is here assigned. 



The antepenultimate molar (fig. 114, m i) consists of four 

 ridges and a talon. 



Three molars are developed anterior to this tooth ; the 

 first (fig. 114, d z) is the smallest, with a subquadrate crown of 

 two transverse ridges. The second molar (ib., d 3), of twice 

 the size of the first, has three ridges. The third molar (ib., d 4), 

 with an increase of one-third the bulk of the former, has three 

 ridges and a bituberculate talon, which in some specimens 

 might almost be reckoned as a fourth ridge. The two-ridged 

 premolar (ib.,jp 3) above described, takes the place of the second 

 of the above molars, after the first and second are shed. The 

 above definition of the molar series applies to both upper and 

 lower jaws, the cut (fig. 114), and the symbolic letters and 

 numbers, preclude the necessity of verbal description. 



From the analogy of the existing elephants, it may be in- 

 ferred that the long tusks (fig. 115, 1) supported by the pre- 

 maxillaries, were preceded by a pair of small deciduous 

 incisors. There is not such ground for concluding their 

 existence in the mandible ; but this jaw, in the male Mastodon 

 longirostris (fig. 115), supported two incisive tusks, shorter 

 and straighter than those above. 



In the proboscidian quadrupeds the molar teeth, progres- 

 sively increasing in size, and most of them in complexity, 

 follow each other from before backwards, at longer intervals 

 than in other quadrupeds, and are never simultaneously in 



