THEIR FOOD. 



287 



in the former necessarily renders the grinding surface much 

 more complex than in the latter. Let any one look at the 

 beautiful figure of the molar crown of the Indian Elephant 

 in the ' British Fossil Mammalia,' cut 90, p. 233, and compare 

 it with cut 92, p. 237, of the Mammoth; the contrasted dif- 

 ferences are obvious at a glance. The latter is a mechanism 

 for finer disintegration; but the former, from its conjoint 

 properties of greater strength, complexity, and inequality of 

 surface, is a more powerful apparatus for crushing and con- 

 tusing hard ligneous fibre. 



For these reasons I cannot assent to the soundness of the 

 asserted physiological inference, that a coarser kind of 

 vegetable food and a larger proportion of ligneous fibre must 

 have entered into the subsistence of the Mammoth than enter 

 into that of the living Asiatic species, or that there was any 

 necessary relation between the peculiar structure of its teeth 

 and the subarctic arboreous vegetation of Siberia, seeino- 

 that the same structure holds in the molars of the pre-glacial 

 Mammoth of the Norfolk coast, and in that of Central 

 Italy. Professor Owen has taunted the great observers who 

 preceded him with having failed to follow up the inquiry 

 regarding the Siberian Mammoth to its legitimate conse- 

 quences : — 



' It might have been expected that the physiological con- 

 sequences deducible from the organization of the extinct 

 species, which was thus, in so unusual a degree, brought to 

 light' (i.e. the Adams-Mammoth), 'would have been at once 

 pursued to their utmost legitimate boundary, in proof of the 

 adaptation of the Mammoth to a Siberian climate ; but save 

 the remark, that the hairy covering of the Mammoth must 

 bave adapted it for a more temperate zone than that assigned 

 to existing Elephants, 1 no further investigation of the re- 

 lation of its organization to its habits, climate, and mode of 

 life appear to have been instituted; they have, in some 

 instances, indeed, been rather checked than promoted.' 2 



It is certainly unexpected to see it insinuated that it was 

 left to Pictet to point out, in 1844, that the long hah- of the 

 extinct species appeared to fit it for sustaining a greater 

 degree of cold than that which the Indian Elephant now 

 bears. Nearly a century ago Pallas threw out the same 

 conjecture regarding Rlmwceros tichorhinus, upon the hair 

 with which it was covered; while Cuvier expressed his 

 opinion on the subject with characteristic precision. After 



1 ' La longue toison dont cet animal 

 etait couvert semblerait memo demon- 

 trer, qu'il 6tait organise pour supporter 

 un degre do froid plus grand quo celui 



qui convient a l'elephant de l'lnde.' 

 Pictet, Paleontologie, 8vo. torn. i. 1844, 

 p. 75. 



3 British Fossil. Manim., p. 267. 



