56 



FAUNA ANTIQUA SIVALENSIS. 



CoUinson, in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1768, gave 

 some good figures of the back grinders, and shrewdly observed 

 that the form of their crown was adapted for crashing boughs, 

 twigs, and leaves, betokening the animal to have been of 

 herbivorous habits.^ William Hunter, struck with the great 

 contrast between the salient enamel ridges of these teeth and 

 the narrow plated flat surface in the grinders of the elephant, 

 inferred the American fossil to have been a gigantic car- 

 nivorous animal, which he pi'oposed naming Pseudelei)hant? 

 The great reputation so justly attaching to the name of 

 Hunter gave undue weight and a wide currency to this very 

 erroneous opinion, and further led to the mammoth of Siberia 

 being commonly confounded xinder the same carnivorous 

 notion with the mastodon of North America. 



Peter Camper, in the first instance, made a considerable 

 step towards an accurate laiowledge of the extinct animal, 

 by the inference that its molar teeth had a greater analogy 

 with those of the elephant than of the hippopotamus ; and 

 that, like the former, it was probably invested with a trunk 

 and with tusks ; ^ but he afterwards expressed doubts which 

 compromised the value of his original observations, having 

 been led to adopt the opinion of Michaelis, that the animal 

 belonged to the order Bruta of Linnteus ; that it had no tusks, 

 and differed greatly from the elephant/ This error, as has 

 been explained by Cuvier, arose from the inspection of a 

 detached palate with gTinders, the posterior part of which 

 was mistaken, both by Michaelis and by Camper, for the 

 anterior.^ 



Pennant first ventm-ed, in 1793, to designate the American 

 fossil animal in a systematic work as a species of elephant, 

 by the name of E. Americanus; and Blumenbach, in 1797, 

 erected it into a kind of genus, under the name of Mammut 

 Ohioticum, which he briefly characterized by the form of 

 the teeth. Cuvier, in his earliest memoir on the elephant, 

 described it also as a sj)ecies of this genus under the sjiecific 

 designation aj)plied by Pennant of E. Americanus,'^ for which 

 Adrian Camper, entertaining the same opinion of its generic 

 relations, proposed the substitution of E. macroceplialus.'' 

 But in his second extended and elaborate memoir, published 

 in 1805, which formed the groundwork of what he has 



' CoUinson, Pliil. Trans. 1768, vol. 

 Ivii. p. 469. 



2 W. Hunter, Phil. Trans, vol. Iviii. 

 p. 38. 



^ Camper, Acta Petropolit. torn. i. 

 part 11, p. 219. 

 ■ '' Idem, loc. cit. torn. ii. p. 259. 



^ Oss. Fo.ss. torn. i. p. 212. 



^ ' E. Amerieamis, molarlbus mnlti- 

 cuspidilms lamellis post dctritionem 

 quadrilobatis.' Ciivier, Mem. de I'ln- 

 stitut. Ann. vii. (1798). ' Siir les es- 

 p6ces d'elepli. viv. et foss.' p. 21. 



' A. Camper, ' Deseript. xVuatom. d'uu 

 elephant male,' avant-prop. Note, p. 

 10. 



