PROCEEDINGS 
OF 
THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
Vou. Ill. Parr II. 1842. No. 87. 
February 23.—Hugh Falconer, M.D., Superintendent of the East 
India Company’s Botanic Garden at Saharunpore, and Alexander 
Busby, Esq., Cassilis, Hunter’s River, New South Wales, were 
elected Fellows of this Society. 
A memoir was read, entitled, “ Report on the Missourium now 
exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, with an inquiry into the claims of 
the Tetracaulodon to generic, distinction,” by Richard Owen, Esq., _ 
F.G.S., &c. 
The author commences with some remarks on the manner in which 
the Missourium is set up, and after poimting out certain mistakes, as 
well as the readiness with which Mr. Koch, the proprietor, corrected 
an error respecting the first pair of ribs, he states that the necessary 
reform in the juxtaposition of other parts of the skeleton could be 
effected only at a great expense. 
Mr. Owen then proceeds to consider the species of animal to 
which the skeleton is to be referred. It was, he says, a mammi- 
ferous animal, and while the anterior extremities disprove the ex- 
istence of clavicles, they establish that the fossil belonged to the 
Ungulata. The enormous tusks of the upper jaw further show that 
it was a member of the proboscidean group of Pachyderms, and that 
the molar teeth prove it to be identical with the Tetracaulodon or 
Mastodon giganteum. With respect to the horizontal position of the — 
tusks in the skeleton exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Mr. Owen 
states, that it may have arisen from compression, the tusk of the Mas- 
todon, like that of the Elephant, being inserted by a nearly straight 
cylindrical base in a socket of corresponding form, and can be 
rotated in any given direction when the natural attachments are de- 
stroyed by decomposition ; and he alludes to the skeleton exhibited 
in London in 1805, in which the tusks were bent downwards. 
Having, by a series of comparisons of the teeth and bones, which 
the author does not conceive it necessary to recount, arrived at the 
conclusion that the Missourium is either a Tetracaulodon or Masto- 
don, he next considers the relations in which these supposed distinct 
genera stood to each other; premising that Mr. Koch’s skeleton 
illustrates the osteology of the gigantic Mastodon far more com- 
pletely than has been done by any other collection of North Ameri- 
can fossils brought to Europe. The genus Tetracaulodon was 
founded by Dr. Godman on the lower jaw of a young Proboscidean 
VOL. III, PART II. 3K 
