PROBOSClDEiE. 179 



discussion both in America and England; and the true natiu-e of the osteology of the Mastodon 

 was not known until ten years later, 1841, when Koch made a public exhibition of the entire 

 skeleton and other remains of the North American ^lastodon, which has since been bought for the 

 British Museiim, and is now preserved there. The ingenious exhibitor had contrived a fanciful 

 reconstruction of the skeleton, inconsistent with the principles of animal mechanics ; the huge tusks, 

 instead of being placed with their points directed upward, as in the Elephant, or downwards as 

 had formerly been suggested by Mr. Rembrandt Peale,* were spread out horizontally, with 

 diverging curves, so as to resemble two great sicldes. Other corresponding extravagances were 

 exhibited in the opposition of the limbs, and for the grotesque form so constructed, ilr. Koch 

 proposed a distinct generic place under the name Missourium. These blunders have been rectified 

 since the specimen passed into the national collection, and with their removal the genus MissorKiUM 

 has disappeared too. 



The molar teeth have prominent mammillae, or coUiculi, as Dr. Falconer designated them, while 

 the molars of the Elephant are characterized by parallel lamellae, or plates. This character, although 

 apparently a very marked one, does not serve for all species. "Wliile it is scarcely possible to see 

 any resemblance between tlio molars of the extreme species, the characters become imperceptibly 

 less defined as the species approach, luitil it is almost impossible to say of some which have been 

 raised into a sub-genus, under the name of Stegodon, whether they are Mastodons or Elephants. 

 If we suppose the molar teeth of the Mastodon to be compressible, and their substance to be pressed 

 between front and back, and so that the coUicuH are squeezed thin and flat, we .shoidd convert the teeth 

 of the Mastodon into teeth of the Elephant, only much shorter, and ha\-ing fewer lamellas ; but the 

 number of these coUicidi cUS'er in different species. In the simplest form, they bear a series of double 

 rows of three mamniiUse, separated from each other by a hollow with a ridge in the middle. In the 

 next stage, they have a series of four mammiUaj in a double row. Then we come to a series of five in 

 a double row. At next stage, the hollow between the two rows begins to disappear, so that, instead of 

 each two mammillae being separated by a hollow, they are turned into single transverse ridges ; and 

 we have then the sub-genus Stegodon, with a scries of six and more rows, forming the transition to 

 the Elephants. 



Dr. Falconer has well monographed the species of Mastodon and Elephant,t and has appended 

 to his paper a useful synoptical table of species ; according to this, there arc thirteen species 

 of Mastodon, J and fifteen Elephants, including the two li^^ng species of the latter. Dr. Giebel 

 reckons only seven Mastodons and eleven Elephants. Other authors have made as numy as 

 nineteen Mastodons and thirty-four Elephants. Probably the true number lies between Dr. 

 Falconer and Dr. Giebel. Dr. Falconer recognises six Mastodons as having lived in Europe (five 

 of them in France), three at one time in the upper miocene, and two at another in the pliocene ; 

 four in India, one of which has only been found in North India (Sivalik Hills), and three in South 

 India, two of which also inhabited Burmah ; one from North America, and two from South America 

 (the Andes). Bones and teeth of the ilastodon are, according to Humboldt, so abundant in a locality 

 near Santa Fe de Bogota, in Columbia, that it bore the name of " the field of giants." 



♦ CuviER, "Oss. Foss." i. 239. species wore very different, as the differential marlcs 



t Faixoxer, in " Oeolog. Soc. Quarterly .Journal," vol. pointed out by hira are now known to indicate nothing 



xiii. p. .31!), 1857. more than the individual and .sexual varieties of the 



X While the material was still gixatly inferior in same species. 



amount, Prof. Grant also made thirteen species, but his 



