OCT 1 1900 



THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. VI. 



No. VIII.— AUGUST, 1899. 



I. — Notes on Elepras (^Stegodon) ganesa, Falo, & Caut., from 

 THE Pliocene Deposits of the Sewalik Hills, India. 



By Henry "Woodward, LL.D,, F.R.S., F.G.S., etc. 

 (PLATE XIV.) 



INDIA, the present home of one of the two types of existing 

 elephants {Eleplias Indicus), has also yielded abundant evidence 

 of numerous extinct forms of this animal ; two species of 

 Dinotherium, eight species of Mastodon, and seven species of 

 extinct elephants being recorded from the Miocene and Pliocene 

 formations of that great continent. 



^lepJias ganesa, the subject of these notes, was probably one of 

 the lai'gest of all the fossil elephants known, and is represented in 

 the Geological Gallery of the British Museum (Natural History), 

 Cromwell Eoad, by a skull from the Sewalik Hills, India, the tusks 

 of which measure 10 feet 6 inches in length outside the alveolar 

 portion, and 2 feet 3 inches more within the alveolus. 



This superb specimen, presented to the Trustees in 1848 by 

 General Sir William Erskine Baker, K.C.B., has quite recently been 

 remounted in an improved position in the centre of the Gallery, 

 and a lower jaw has been added to the cranium, which greatly 

 increases the interest of the specimen. The tusks, which, by com- 

 pression in the rock, had been squeezed close together, and presented 

 an abnormal appeai'ance, have now been set up wider apart, so as to 

 allow of a sufficient interval for the insertion of the proboscis, as 

 would of necessity have been the case in the living animal. 



Turning to Falconer's Paleeontological Memoirs ^ (vol. i, p. 20), 

 we find he proposes the following classification of the species of 

 Mastodon and Eleplias, based upon the ridge-formula and structure 

 of the molar teeth. After dividing the Mastodons into Trilophodonts 

 and Tetralophodonts, Falconer proceeds to classify the elephants 

 into three sectional groups, namely : I, Stegodon ; II, Zoxodon ; 

 III, Elasmodon. In the first of these divisions (Stegodon), Falconer 

 placed those species which Owen called ' Transitional Mastodons.'" 



1 " Palpeontological Memoirs and Notes of the late Hugh Falconer, M.D., 

 V.P.E.S., For. Sec. Geol. Soc." (1868), compiled and edited by Chas. Murchison^ 

 M.D., F.E.S. Two vols., Svo (plates). 



DECADE IV. — VOL. TI. — NO. VIII. 22 



