EARTH 



SCIENCES 



LIBRARY 



QMS 7 

 PREFACE. ' 



THE fossil remains of elephants in the Department of Geology 

 are so numerous, arid the ancestral history revealed by them is 

 of so much general interest, that they appear worthy of a 

 special Guide- Book. The present account of the collection has 

 therefore been prepared by Dr. Charles W. Andrews, who has 

 already published technical descriptions of some of the more 

 important specimens in the Philosophical Transactions of the 

 Royal Society (1903 and 1908), and in "A Descriptive 

 Catalogue of the Tertiary Vertebrata of the Fayum, Egypt" 

 (issued by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1906). 



The immediate ancestors of the modern elephants have long 

 been known through the discoveries of Falconer and Cautley 

 in the Pliocene formations of the Siwalik Hills in India ; but 

 the earliest members of the group have only been found during 

 recent years in the Eocene deposits of Egypt. The whole 

 of the Cautley Collection is exhibited in the Museum 

 besides other fine specimens from the Siwalik Hills described 

 by Falconer. The Egyptian discoveries also form an extensive 

 collection, though many of the original specimens are in the 

 Geological Museum, Cairo, and only represented ,here by 

 plaster casts. 



Among the illustrations, figs. 1 and 6 are reproduced from 

 the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " by permission of The Times. 



A. SMITH WOODWARD. 



DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY. 

 February, 1908. 



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