NOTE ON ELEPHAS MERIDIONALIS. 7 



the Mammoth and Eleplias meridionalis. It is common in Italy, 

 and has been found in many parts of Sicily and in Piedmont, 

 in the neighbourhood of Rome and Florence, also in Spain and 

 as far south as Gibraltar. It is scarce in France, the Valleys 

 of the Somme and of the Maine only have yielded any of its 

 remains. Some have been obtained from the preglacial beds of 

 the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, from the more recent river 

 and estuarine beds, and from cavern and fissure deposits. The 

 English quaternary alluviums which cover the boulder-clay in the 

 eastern counties are not rich in remains of Elephas antiquus, 

 Mr. John Evans gives a list of the drift-beds in England, and cites 

 one instance only of Eleplias antiquus, in a bed which does not lie 

 under the boulder-clay. Until Falconer's time this species Avas 

 supposed to be only a variety of the Mammoth, neither were the 

 two forms of the crowns of its molars the broad, and the narrow 

 differentiated by any previous palaeontologist. The lower 

 molars have a slight central expansion of the crown more or less 

 angular, the crimping varies in different teeth as well as in the 

 same tooth, according as the crown has been more or less worn 

 down. Some of the digitations of the plates show disconnected 

 discs as in Elephas meridionalis, while the rest have a continuous,- 

 unbroken double-edge of enamel. 



Professor Boyd Dawkins considers the tusks of Elevhas antiquus 

 to be nearly straight. Mr. Leith Adams (1881) thoiight this fact 

 had yet to be identified. This will be referred to further on, where a 

 remarkable double curved tusk very different in shape and bulk to 

 that of E. meridionalis is described.* 



In an irregular trough or depression of the Purbeck and Upper 

 Portland beds from 20 to 30 feet thick and from 50 to 60 yards 

 wide, extending to a distance from 200 to 300 yards underlain by 

 large waterborne blocks on the surface of the Upper Portland rocks 

 in the eastern part of the Admiralty Quarries, Portland, is a 

 Mammiliferous Drift, composed of red clay or brown, passing into 



* See Prof. Prestwiche's " Notes on the Phenomena of the Quaternary 

 Period in the Isle of Portland and Around Weymouth." Q.J.G.S., 1875. 



