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BRITISH FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 



As regards the long bones, it would seern that as compared with the Mammoth the 

 humerus and femur are stouter in E. antiquus ; and this stoutness was, doubtless, the main 

 feature in its general outline. At the same time the E. meridionalis was not only of 

 colossal dimensions, but, judging from the relative thickness of its bones, presented a like 

 proportional stoutness, so that it is impossible at present to say to which form the 

 Elephantine bones from the Eorest Bed belong, as teeth of the two species are often found 

 together. Indeed, the relative connections between varieties of the broad crown of the 

 molar of E. antiquus, and certain teeth ascribed to E. meridionalis, are striking and cannot 

 be determined with certainty until the dentition and osteology of the latter have been 

 carefully worked out. 



It seems apparent from the data here advanced that the Proboscidian, to which the 

 name Elephas antiquus has been given, lived in Britain before the Glacial epoch along 

 with an allied form, E. meridionalis, and that both, judging from the quantities of their 

 remains met with in Southern Europe, were southern and probably eastern forms with 

 pedigrees extending backwards into Miocene times, as shadowed forth by their 

 congeners from the deposits of Northern India. 



It is further established that the Elephas antiquus survived the Ice Age, and 

 flourished subsequently along with the Mammoth on British soil. Unlike the latter, it 

 has not hitherto been traced to the Arctic regions nor to North America ; perhaps it was 

 not suited for boreal regions, and may have only so journeyed in England after the 

 cold period had passed away. That it was a distinct species or form from the Mammoth 

 cannot, I think, be doubted ; at all events, the dental and apparently the osteological 

 characters are as broadly distinctive as those which obtain between the two species now 

 living in Asia and Africa. 



