326 PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [April 8, 



longing to the same species. Mast, longirostris ; but adopted 

 for the Auvergne form the name of M. Arvernensis ; and went a 

 step beyond his predecessors in proposing a new name for the IMas- 

 todoj-remains found in the arenaceous deposits near Montpellier, 

 which he identifies with the Mastodon of the Astesan and the Val 

 u'Arno under the name of 3/. brevirostre^ . Pomel, in his memoir 

 of 1848, proposes a new name for the Simorre Trilophodo7i, namely 

 M. Cuvieri, and he retains that of 31. atujustidens for the Auvergne 

 and Italian forms, admitting their distinctness from M. longiroS' 

 tris of Eppelsheim f . In his 'Catalogue Methodique' of 1854 he 

 adopts the name of M. Arvernensis for the Auvergne and Montpel- 

 lier form, to which he assigns the additional foreign localities of the 

 Val d'Arno, Piedmont, and the Crag in England : but in a remark 

 on the next page he reiterates the view expressed in his previous me- 

 moir, that he has retained the name of 3/. angustidensiQV\\\Q species 

 of Italy X' Nesti §, in his description of the Tuscan remains, adopts 

 the name of M. anyustidens (Mastodonte a denti stretti) in the loose 

 comprehensive sense in which it was used by Cuvier ; v/hile Eugenio 

 Sismonda, aware of the various and contradictory opinions upon the 

 point, guardedly described the fine skeleton found at Dusino in Pied- 

 mont, under the title of ' Osteographia di un Mastodonte angusti- 

 dente ' j] . My friend and collaborateur Colonel Sir Proby Cautley, in 

 1836, figured and described some teeth of the Indian species to which 

 we subsequently restricted the name of M. {Tetraloj^hodon) Siva- 

 lensis, as identical with the " Mastodonte a dents ctroites" of Cuvier, 

 and he expressed at the same time the opinion that the Italian form 

 which he had more particularly in view would, with the Sewalik one, 

 constitute a subgenus of the Angustidens type, in contradistinction 

 to the type of Clift's M. latidens%. 



These, so far as I am aware, are the leading opinions which have been 

 put forward by original writers on this much-disputed question. 

 Those which have been expressed by the compilers of systematic 

 works on Palaeontology, however useful, are of little weight in the dis- 

 cussion, as they express more the balance of the authorities numeri- 

 cally, than opinions formed upon independent examination of the 

 subject by themselves. The specific name Mastodon angustidens is 

 even struck out of the list of European species, except as a synonym, 

 in the last edition of Bronn's " Lethcca," and replaced by the terms 

 M. Arvernensis, M. longirostris, andil/. Cuvie?-i'-^''^. Palseontologists 

 would confer a great boon on Geology, if they could be brought to 

 agree in applying this name (M. angustidens) to the Simorre form, 

 for which it was devised })y Cuvier. 



The views which we entertain were partially disclosed in the first 



* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 3me serie, torn, v. p. 268. 

 t Bull. delaSoc. Geologique, 1848, toni. v. p. 257. 

 X Catal, methocl. et descript. pp. 74, 75. 

 § Nuovo Giorn. de Letterat., Pisa, torn. xii. pp. 17-34. 

 II Mem. del Reale Accad. di Torino, 1851, pp. 175-235. 

 • 1[ Journ. of the Asiat. Soc. of Bengal, vol. v. p. 294. 



** Lethsea Geognostica, 3rd edit. vol. iii. pp. 827-832 (1856). 



