60 Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants, 



Formerly a great number of authors were in posfJession 

 of entire and well formed teeth of fossil elephants without 

 knowing it. 



Aldrovandus, Leibnitz, Kundman, and Beuth, were in 

 this situation. 



The inverse of this case has often taken place also, and 

 teeth of a very different description have been exhibited for 

 those of elephants. 



Akirovandus {De MetalL) describes three teeth of the hip- 

 popotamus as those of an elephant. 



M. de la Metherie (Theory of the Earth, vol. v. p. 200,) 

 says that the tooth found near Vienne, in Dauphine, and 

 engraved in the Journal de Phys^ique for February 1773, 

 p. 135, seems to have belonged to the elephant of Africa. 

 We have shown that it must have belonged to a species of 

 the grand tapir. The same author (at p. 201) asserts, " that 

 it ,is now proved that the teeth from the Ohio, and those 

 brought from Peru by Dombey, are those of an elephant 

 vkhich is of the same species as that of Africa." 



Notwithstanding all this, the teeth from Vienne, those 

 of Ohio, and those from Peru, do not resemble each other 

 at all, and neither of them resemble those of the African 

 elephant. 



Other authors have thought of establishing specific dif^ 

 ferences from the number of teeth existing at one and the 

 same time in the jaw. Thus Merck {Seconde Lettre sjir hs 

 Os Foisiles de Rhinoceros, Darmst. 1784, p. 12, ek seq.) 

 thinks he has established the difference between living and 

 fossil elephants from the circumstance of the jaws he ob- 

 served having only two teeth, while that of the elephant 

 described by Daubenton had four. He fills eight pages with 

 reasoning on this subject, and finishes by proposing an ex- 

 planation of this vaiieiy in the number of teeth, similar to 

 that of Pallas, by referring it to the difference of ages. 

 M. Morozzo {Mem. de la Societd Ital. torn. x. p. J()2) even 

 informs us that the elephant has only one tooth on each 

 side. 



Some persons haying been ignorant how these teeth di- 



zninish 



