﻿ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS— TRUE MOLARS. 



2 a 



A lower molar from Oundle, Northamptonshire, with nine and a half ridges in a 

 space of 7 inches, with thick plates on an average 9 inch per plate, might belong to the 

 above, or else the second true molar. It is very characteristic of the species, but it is 

 too much mutilated to allow its position in the series to be determined with certainty. 



No. 27,906, B. M., from Clacton deposits, is an upper molar, with a highly digitated 

 posterior, and a very fragmentary anterior talon ; it holds x 11 x in 8 inches. 



Other examples are numerous, such as a tooth from the Mendip caves in the 

 Taunton Collection, referred to in Falconer's notes; it holds x 12 x in 7"2 inches. He 

 has also figured a broken tooth, which seems to have held twelve to thirteen ridges in a 

 space of about 7" 5 inches. 1 



In the Jermyn Street Museum there is an entire upper first true molar from a cutting 

 of the Great Northern Railway in Huntingdonshire. The crown, although just invaded 

 and with none of the digitations worn out, is narrow, and altogether typical of the species. 

 It furnishes a formula of x 10 x in 7" 5 inches. 



In the same collection there is an upper molar, with only its first three ridges invaded, 

 from river deposits under St. James's Square, London ; it holds x 12 x in 7 - 5 inches. 

 The crown is also narrow. 



The portion of a mandible containing a much worn molar discovered on Palling 

 Beach, near Happisborough, and now in the Norwich Museum with the remainder of 

 Mr. Gunn's splendid collection, is one of the two specimens on which Dr. Falconer 

 founded the presence of E. prisons of Goldfuss, in British strata. The fact that Falconer 

 mistook the characters of these teeth is sufficient to show that they differed very much 

 from the ordinary or typical tooth of E. antiquus, at all events, as then known to him. 



In the essay on " British and European Fossil Elephants," as also in the plates in his 

 Memoirs, 2 Dr. Falconer goes into minute details with reference to this mandible and tooth. 

 The specimen he considers to represent a well-worn second true molar ; and, seeing that 

 at the time he correlated it with the Loxodontes, the ridge formula could scarcely have 

 admitted a larger figure than eight or nine plates besides talons. The tooth has been recently 

 fixed in its socket so that the fangs cannot now be studied, but the representation in the 

 plate referred to shows an anterior fang supporting two ridges, followed by two other 

 fangs and a large curving posterior root sustaining three plates j there are clear indica- 

 tions of broken and worn-out ridges in front and deep pressure marks behind. Consider- 

 ing, therefore, that the anterior fang is now supporting two ridges, I am much inclined 

 to consider this fragmentary tooth to be an antepen- instead of a j»£#-ultimate true molar, 

 and that it may have lost four and a half of its ridges, there being seven and a half 

 remaining in space of G"4 inches. Whichever it may be, there can be little doubt as to 

 its claims to a position among the teeth of E. antiquus. Although the plates are thicker 

 antero-posteriorly, especially in the middle, with angular expansions and dilatations, the 



1 'J?. A. S.,' pi. xiv a, figs. 4 and 4 a. 



2 Vol. ii, p. 100. The tootli is shown detached from the jaw in pi. vii, figs. 3 and 4, of the same volume. 



