294 I'ROBOSCIDIA. 



to it, had the Mastodon giganteus been the sole species of 

 the genus which manifested such remarkable characters. 



But an analogous sexual distinction would seem to 

 have characterised the species of Mastodon (Mastodon 

 angustidens) most common in Europe, by specimens dis- 

 covered in the tertiary deposits at Eppelsheim, in Gascony, 

 and in England, as in the example of the inferior tusk 

 above described. 



A symphysial extremity of the lower jaw with two 

 sockets, shewing that it had contained tusks slightly in- 

 clined downwards, together with portions of nearly straight 

 tusks, from the same formation at Eppelsheim, had been 

 originally assigned by Dr. Kaup to his genus Dinotherium ; 

 but the subsequent discovery of the remaining part of the 

 same lower jaw as the bi-alveolar symphysis shewed, by 

 the molar teeth, that it was a Mastodon which had pos- 

 sessed the two inferior and almost straight tusks ; and 

 upon this specimen, (fig. 96,) which is remarkable for the 

 great prolongation of the symphysis and sockets of the 

 tusks, Dr. Kaup founded his Mastodon longirostris ; inter- 

 preting the character of the lower tusks in the European 

 Mastodon as a specific distinction, just as Dr. Godman 

 had previously interpreted the first discovered American 

 Mastodon's lower jaw with tusks, as evidence of a new 

 genus. 



The molar teeth of the Eppelsheim jaw do not, however, 

 differ from those on which Cuvier had previously founded 

 his species called Mastodon angustidens, and I have been 

 led by this correspondence, and by the analogy of the 

 Mastodon giganteus, to the conclusion* that the lower 

 tusks of the Eppelsheim Mastodon are a sexual character, 



* Expressed in my ' Report on British Fossil Mammalia,' in the Report of 

 the British Association, 1843, p. 220. 



