INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 



in the ' Pleistocene ' Norwich Crag ; while this English 

 species of Mastodon, wherever it has been met with, whether 

 in this country or on the Continent, has been almost in- 

 variably found in company with remains of a species of 

 Elephant which Professor Owen has described as identical 

 with the JElephas primigenius or Mammoth of the Post- 

 Pliocene Drift and the modern Siberian ice-fields. 



The object of the present communication is, to endeavour 

 to ascertain what are the species of Mastodon and Elephant 

 found fossil in Britain ; what the specific names which ought 

 to be applied to them ; and what the principal formations 

 and localities where they are elsewhere met with in Europe. 

 I am the more induced to attempt the task from the circum- 

 stance that Prof. Owen, in an important memoir ' On some 

 Mammalian Eossils from the Red Crag of Suffolk,' which 

 appeared in a late number of the Society's Quarterly Journal, 1 

 adheres to the opinion expressed in his Report to the 

 British Association for 1843, and subsequently discussed at 

 greater length in his 'British Fossil Mammalia' in 1846, 

 that the Mastodon of the English Crag is identical with the 

 Mastodon angustidens of Cuvier, the Mastodon longirostris of 

 Kaup, and the Mastodon Arvemensis of Croizet and Jobert. 

 Prof. Owen, on both the occasions here quoted, up to 1846, 

 has maintained the prevalent opinion, that all the Elephant 

 remains met with in England are referable to a single 

 species, namely Elephas primigenius ; and I am not aware 

 that he has altered his views upon this point in any subse- 

 quent publication. I have devoted much study to the sub- 

 ject, during the last fifteen years, in connexion with the 

 numerous fossil species of both genera which are met with 

 in India., with a view to a monograph of the Proboscidean 

 family, fossil and recent. The results to which I have been 

 conducted, as to the disputed European species, are different 

 from those arrived at by Prof. Owen. The most of those 

 results have been long exhibited, so far as figured evidence 

 goes, in the published illustrations of the ' Fauna Antiqua 

 Sivalensis ' ; 2 but, having devoted the last summer and 

 autumn to a Proboscidean examination, so to speak, of some 

 of the principal collections on the Continent, with special 

 reference to the European fossil species, I have been enabled 

 to confirm or correct previous conclusions on a wider field 

 of observation. In order to avoid needless repetition in 

 the sequel, I may mention that the tour here referred to 

 embraced a detailed study of the very extensive collection of 



1 No. 47, vol. xii. part iii. (Aug. 1, 

 1856), p. 223. 



2 Fauna Antiq. Sival. Illustr. part v. 



Plates xlii. — xlv. 1847. (Reproduced 

 in Plates i. and ii. of this volume. Spo 

 also vol. i. p. 476. — Ed.) 



B 2 



