1 1 4 2 THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



The earliest of the species allied to the living Indian one is the 

 Sutledje gutledje elephant (E. hysudricus} from the Pliocene rocks of the 



' Siwalik hills at the foot of the Himalayas. This species had the plates 

 of the molar teeth very thin, but less tall and less numerous than in the Indian ele- 

 phant. Its skull resembled that of the latter; and it is quite possible that in this 

 species we may have the ancestor of both the Indian elephant and the mammoth. 



The Pleistocene deposits of the Narbada valley in India yield the re- 



L mains of a very large elephant (E. namadicus), which takes its name 



from the locality in question. In the structure of its molar teeth, one 



of which is represented on p. 1117, this species connects the Indian elephant with the 



one following. It is characterized by its very short skull, which has an enormous 



ridge running transversely across the forehead, and some of the bones of this species 



appear to indicate animals of thirteen or fourteen feet in height, since they are 



vastly longer than those of the Calcutta skeleton of the Indian elephant mentioned 



on p. 1118. This species ranged eastward into Japan. 



The straight-tusked elephant (E. antiguus) from the Pleistocene 



deposits of Europe, differs from the mammoth by its smaller and 

 Tusked 

 Elephant comparatively-straight tusks, and the fewer and wider plates in the molar 



teeth, of which the crowns are generally narrow. Indeed, some of 

 these teeth come so close to those of the African elephant as to indicate the near 

 relationship between that species and the fossil one. The straight-tusked elephant 

 ranged from Yorkshire to Algeria. 



We are so accustomed to regard elephants as the giants of creation, 

 Pysftny 



Ele hant ^ at ^ * s at ^ rst Difficult to believe in the existence of a species not 



exceeding three feet in height. Yet pygmy elephants (E. mnaidrien- 

 sis and E. melitensis) , of which the smallest is considered to have reached only those 

 diminutive proportions, were abundant in Malta and some of the neighboring 

 islands during the Pleistocene period, their remains occurring in the caverns and 

 the rock fissures. These elephants, many of which were not larger than a donkey, 

 appear to have been closely related to the living African species, and were doubt- 

 less dwarfed in size from the small area of the islands they inhabited. 

 g . The southern elephant (E. meridionalis} from the upper Pliocene 



Elephant roc ^ s f Italy and France, and also found in the forest bed on the coast 



of Norfolk, and at Dewlish in Dorsetshire, was the largest of all the 

 European species, its height at the shoulder having been estimated at upward of 

 fifteen feet. The molar teeth of this giant have very wide crowns, with the plates 

 very broad and widely separated from one another, and somewhat less numerous 

 than in the African species. The flat-headed elephant (E. planifrons] from the 

 Pliocene rocks of the Siwalik hills, was an allied Indian species, distinguished 

 from all the other true elephants by the circumstance that two of the milk-molar 

 teeth were vertically replaced by premolars; this elephant thus having eight more 

 teeth than any other species, and thereby showing evident traces of closer kinship 

 with the mastodons. 



The so-called stegodont elephants (so named from the roof-like form assumed by 

 the ridges of their molar teeth) of India and other parts of Southeastern Asia, form 



