202 BRITISH AND EUROPEAN FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 



period. It would seem intelligible only on the supposition 

 that the section includes beds of different ages. I have never 

 seen a tooth of the true Mammoth among those of Loxodon 

 priscus and Euelephas antiquus, from the fluviatile deposits in 

 the Valley of the Thames. 



It is beyond the scope of this communication to discuss 

 the nature of the Elephant remains occurring elsewhere in 

 deposits more or less analogous to those of the Valley of the 

 Thames, such as in the Valleys of the Stour, the Medway, the 

 Arun, the Avon, the Severn, and other localities in England. 

 I have thought it sufficient to restrict the inquiries on the pre- 

 sent occasion to the range between the Crag on the one hand 

 and the Thames Valley fluviatiles on the other ; and to confine 

 the comparison to a few well-marked and significant forms. 

 Regarded by the light of their common mammalian fauna, 

 they appear to me alike to belong to the same Pliocene age. 



The detail, into which I have entered in the preceding 

 remarks upon the range and associated mammalia of the 

 other European fossil Elephants, relieves me from the neces- 

 sity of dwelling much upon the conditions under which the 

 last and most modern species, Euelephas primigenius, or the 

 true Mammoth of Siberia, is met with in British strata. 

 The thin, parallel, closely arranged, and uncrimped plates of 

 enamel, with the attenuation of the other dentary consti- 

 tuents, disposed like the teeth of a fine comb, readily distin- 

 guish, in the view here taken, the fossil grinder of the 

 Mammoth from those of the other species. And wherever 

 teeth presenting these characters are observed it will, I 

 believe, be invariably found that they occur in deposits of a 

 more recent geological date than the Pliocene fluviatile 

 beds ; and that they are never mixed up, except adventi- 

 tiously, in the same fauna with the other species. In the 

 preceding observations I have referred to the association of 

 species which is presented by the wide-spread loess of the 

 Rhine, and the superficial drift of the plains of Northern 

 Germany, where Mammoth remains are found in company 

 with those of Rhinoceros antiquitatis, horse, musk-ox, rein- 

 deer, and other northern forms. In the plains of Northern 

 Russia and Siberia, to this group the rare Elasmotherium 

 is added, which, there are plausible grounds for believing, 

 ranged as far as the Rhine. The characteristic Sub-Apennine 

 forms, such as the Rhinoceros leptorhinus, 1 Hippopotamus major, 

 or any of the three Pliocene Elephants, are nowhere dis- 

 covered among them. In like manner, the remains of the 

 Mammoth occur in the superficial gravels which are so 



• See page 206, note.— [Ed.] 





