144 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



have material for constructing a fairly complete pedigree 

 of the Proboscidea. 



I shall not attempt to do for the Proboscidea what Huxley 

 so successfully accomplished for the Equidae, but I shall use 

 the fossil elephants as a text on which to hang my observa- 

 tions on Heredity and Natural Selection, satisfied that if I 

 fail to interest you on these abstruse and difficult problems, 

 I shall at least succeed in directing your attention to one 

 of the newest and most fascinating chapters in the history 

 of the Mammalia. 



I need hardly remind you, that while the horse attracts 

 our attention mainly because of the wonderful specialisation 

 of the limbs, the elephant has long been a source of interest 

 because of his remarkable trunk and his still more remarkable 

 dentition. 



I have often wondered how naturalists who believed in 

 special creation pictured in their minds the making of the 

 large quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles. It will be at once 

 admitted that it is much easier to imagine the lordly elephant, 

 emerging in all his strength from the placid surface of a 

 sylvan lake, or issuing from the dark recesses of a primeval 

 cavern, than to think of his being evolved, after untold 

 struggles during countless generations, from PhenacoduSy or 

 some equally primitive Eocene ungulate. 



But it is no longer possible to account for the appearance 

 of the elephant by the simple special creation theory which 

 so completely satisfied so many naturalists up to the middle 

 of the nineteenth century, for we are now able to trace his 

 descent to comparatively simple forms which flourished 

 about the middle of the Eocene epoch ; and it may be 

 safely predicted that in the Lower Eocene beds his ultimate 

 ancestors will sooner or later be discovered. 



Then followed a description of the skull and teeth of 

 Moeritherium, Pakeomastodon, and Tetrahelodon, based on the 

 memoir by Dr Andrews, recently published in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions of the Royal Society} 



The more striking features of these extinct forms having 



1 "On the Evolution of the Proboscidea," Phil. Trans., 1903b, pp. 99-118. 



