46 FAUNA ANTIQUA SIVALENSIS. 



parison of an extensive series of specimens, embracing every 

 period of life and tlie range of individual and sexual varieties 

 through which the species runs, that any safe conclusions 

 can be drawn regarding the distinctive characters of any one 

 form. In consequence, although palaeontologists are agreed 

 on the great points relating to the construction of the head, 

 trunk, and extremities, hardly any two concur respecting the 

 number, form, and succession of the teeth in the different 

 species of mastodon and elephant. 



The surprising number of forms belonging to this family, 

 embraced in the fossil fauna of India, and the immense 

 abundance in which theii' remains have been met with, have 

 placed us perhaps, with respect to the quantity and perfect 

 condition of the materials, in more favourable circumstances 

 for the determination of the SewaKk species than has ordi- 

 narily happened to the palaeontologist in the case of most of 

 the other fossil Proboscidea. Of five of the species to be 

 described in the sequel, we possess nearly perfect crania of 

 each, and, in most of the instances, crania with teeth of all 

 ages, from the very young up to the adult animal, in addition 

 to a vast collection of the detached teeth and lower jaws, so 

 as to furnish us with the whole of the essential evidence 

 requisite for the specific determination of each of these forms. 

 The distinctive characters are so broadly marked, that there 

 is hardly room for a doubt being entertained in regard to 

 them. In the course of the investigation, we have been led 

 to examine the conclusions which have been arrived at by 

 writers who have preceded us upon this family. The Indian 

 species, and those previously described, fossil and recent, 

 have mutually reflected light on each other, and ranged 

 themselves into natural and allied groups. Instead, therefore, 

 of restricting ourselves merely to a description of the Sewalik 

 fossil forms, we shall endeavour, in what follows, to trace the 

 afiinities, and institute an arrangement of all the well-deter- 

 mined species in the family. 



The results to which we have been conducted lead us to 

 differ on certain points from the opinions most commonly 

 entertained at the present day ; for while, on the one hand, 

 it would appear that the fossil species of both elephant and 

 mastodon have been unnecessarily mxdtiplied by authors both 

 in Europe and America, on the other, we are compelled to 

 think that Cuvier and others have rtin into the opposite 

 extreme of caution, and in more than one instance included 

 distinct forms under the same nominal species. Further, in 

 regard to the views which have been at different times 

 advanced respecting the differential characters of elephant 

 and mastodon, in the succession and development of the 



