FALCONER — MASTODON AND ELEPHANT. 279 



served some notable exceptions as regards the two last. The first 

 example that he cites is the " dent de Paurentrin " from the valley 

 of the Rhine, above Strasbnrg, which is remarkable for a great 

 amount of plaiting in the enamel plates. But, as will be shown in 

 discussing E. primigenius, this specimen is not fossil, but of an 

 existing Elephant. The only other exceptions cited are three 

 Italian specimens from Romagnano, Monte Yerde, and the Val 

 d'Arno, in all of which the jplates are very thick, and which in reality 

 belong to E. meridionalis. No exceptional illustration is adduced 

 from Siberia, or any other northern locality, where the true Mam- 

 moth prevails. It is imjolied that they constantly present attenuated 

 and unerimped plates. Cuvier therefore supposed the two last cha- 

 racters to be inconstant, and adhered to the great width of the 

 crown, which, however, is common to the Mammoth and to E. me- 

 ridionalis. It is obvious that the prepossession in his mind in 

 favour of a single European fossil species of Elephant, which is ma- 

 nifest throughout the ' Ossemens Eossiles,' had unconsciously led the 

 great anatomist to undervalue the very characters which he was 

 the first to inculcate. 



The Abbe Croizet, to whom palaeontology is indebted for so much 

 valuable research on the fossil fauna of Yelay, was the first who 

 had the courage to question the decision of Cu^der against E. me- 

 ridionalis. In his work upon Puy-de-D6me, he has figured and 

 described a fragment of an upper (?) molar (lower left of Croizet 

 and Jobert) discovered at Malbattu. It is a good deal mutilated, 

 and the figure is not so exact as to be conclusive ; but in the form of 

 the disks of wear, in the thickness of the enamel plates, and in the 

 slight degree of crimping along the edges, it differs alike from E. 

 {Euelephas) primigenius and E. (Euelephas) antiquus, and corresponds 

 with Italian specimens of E. meridionalis. In plate 10. fig. 1 of 

 the same work, he gives a representation of a fossil molar dis- 

 covered by Lecoq at Clermont, which exhibits similar characters. 

 He refers to Nesti's researches, and sums up by inferring that, as 

 there are two living Elephants, so there were two fossil species — 

 the one with attenuated plates, being the Mammoth of Siberia, the 

 other with thick plates, as seen in specimens from Paurentrin, 

 Romagnano, Monte Verde, Laufen (in Germany), and the Val 

 d'Arno. He considered the facts sufficient, but assigned no other 

 name to the second species than that of " Elephant de Malbattu," 

 and awaited the results of further discovery for confirmation of the 

 inference. 



Professor Owen has entered very fully into the question of dis- 

 tinct species, in the part devoted to Elephas of his Report to the 

 British Association for 1843, and subsequently reproduced in his 

 separate work on the ' British Eossil Mammalia.' The result at 

 which he arrived, after examining a vast number of specimens, 

 was that there had been only one species of fossil Elephant in 

 Britain, namely, E. primigenius ; and while fully recognizing the 

 marked differences presented by molars from different localities 

 and different deposits, he had found so many intermediate grada- 



