ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIU3.— CRANIUM. 129 



is quite apparent also in the latter.^ Evidently, as in the Asiatic, where a similar sinking 

 exists, it varies considerably with age, and is deeper in some individuals than in others ; 

 and varies, no doubt, also in the sexes. E.gangsa and E. insignis show also slight depres- 

 sions in the same situation. It is more pronounced in drawings of E. meridionalis ; 

 whilst the beetling crown oiE. Namadicus is quite unique ; and the excessive sinking in the 

 forehead, amounting to a cranial deformity in the skull, of E. Hgsudricus, in the British 

 Museum, as compared with the perfectly even surface of the part in the adolescent 

 cranium of the same species by its side, suggest the probability that the former may 

 have undergone compression some time after death." 



Again, the forehead is flat in the young of E. Africanus, becoming slightly convex in 

 the adult and aged. E. j^lanifrotis and E. homhifrons appear to have also flat frontals. 



Breadth of forehead. — The breadth of the forehead at its narrowest part between the 

 temporal ridges varies apparently in the insular and Continental varieties of the Asiatic 

 Elephant, but the Mammoth agrees better in the character with the Asiatic than any 

 other species. This part seems broadest in the short-headed Elephants, to wit, E. Africanus, 

 and E. planifrons, gradually narrowing through the two preceding, and E. HyszidricuS) 

 and E. meridionalis to E. homhifrons, where the forehead is excessively narrow as compared 

 with the crown and occiput. 



Nares. — The outline and position of the narial aperture are similar in both the Asiatic 

 Elephant and the Mammoth. It is generally reniform in shape, with the horns directed 

 forwards; the latter character, however, does not seem invariable in the Mammoth, and 

 is reversed in young crania of the recent species, whilst the configurations of the apices 

 of the cornua are more circular in certain individuals than in others. But these characters 

 are not confined to the above species, being more or less observable in E. Africanus, 

 E. meridionalis, E. Namadicus, &c. The aperture, however, is placed at about the same 

 relative distance from the vertex in the Mammoth and Asiatic Elephant, whilst it is 

 nearer to the crown in the African E. vieridionalis, E. Namadicus^ and other brachy- 

 cephalic species. It is a part, however, so liable to injury in the fossil skull that one 

 rarely meets with it in a state of integrity. 



Incisive sheaths. — Dr. Falconer states that the incisive alveoli of the Mammoth 

 form an angle with the frontal plane, thereby necessitating the truncation of the mandible 

 at its symphysis.^ This is somewhat apparent in the Brussels skull, and, although the 



1 This hollow is also evident in the Siberian skull shown in pi. xiv, fig. 2, and in the cranium of 

 Adams's skeleton, pi. xvii, of the ' Ossemens Fossiles.' The skull etched on the fragment of ivory from the 

 Cave of La Madelaine, in the Dordogne, is so truthful that, supposing we had never seen a Mammoth's 

 skull, there could be no difficulty whatever in at once differentiating the characters of the profile of the 

 above from that of either of the recent species, at all events from the African Elephants. This essay of an 

 artist belonging to the early stone age of Southern France is assuredly a most laudable performance. 



2 Compare pi. xlv, fig. 20 a, with fig. 20 b of the ' Fauna Autiqua Sivalensis.' 



•' 'Pal. Mem.,' vol. ii, p. 121. The same is stated to obtain in the E. ganesa, famous for its 

 enormous incisors. 



