CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 239 



trary, much confusion, in making hasty assumptions without the confirmation of reality. 

 As to persistency of character throughout long periods of time, we find many 

 cotemporaries of the Mammoth, to wit, the Red Deer, Elk, Reindeer, Wolf, and others, 

 maintaining, at all events, their skeletal elements unchanged, however much their 

 Post-pliocene ancestors may have differed from them in external covering. 



The association, therefore, of the Mammoth, in North-western, Central, and Southern 

 Europe, with the Ancient and Meridional Elephants, its solitary sojourn in the Arctic and 

 sub-Arctic regions of the Old and New Worlds, and its companionship in the United 

 States with the so-called Columbian Elephant, and maintaining throughout these vast areas 

 the well-marked dental and osseous characters by which it is differentiated from them, 

 are certainly cogent evidences of its claims to be considered a distinct species. As to its 

 range in time, we find the main points connected with, at all events, its dental elements, 

 continuing from the Pliocene Period up to the Neolithic Age. 



The Ancient Elephant has left its remains abundantly in North-western, Central, 

 and Southern Europe, also in Northern Africa and probably Hindostan, where, at all 

 events a close ally, if not the same species, existed under the name of the Narbudda 

 Elephant (E. Namadicus). The Ancient Elephant displayed far more divergent skeletal 

 characters than either of its congeners, and ranged in time from the Pliocene into the 

 Post-pliocene Periods. It may have become extinct before the Mammoth ; at all events 

 the two were cotemporaneous in England during the Cave Period, and the depositions of 

 the drifts, valley-gravels, brick-earths, and possibly the boulder-clays. 1 



The Meridional Elephant has been traced from South-eastern England to the Con- 

 tinent of Europe, including the coast of Holland and Belgium, Northern, Middle, and 

 Southern Prance, Italy, and South-eastern Europe. 2 Its Eastern congener, the broad- 

 fronted Elephant {E. planifrons), claims certain marked relationships. 



The differentiations established by Falconer that three well-marked species may be 

 recognised among the fossil remains of Elephants met with in Europe receive further 

 confirmation from the data I have recorded in this Monograph. These, as well as other 

 species, he characterised by the variations in their grinders, which, although valuable as 

 one of the chief means in forming a diagnosis, should, in all cases, go hand in hand with 

 other elements of the skeleton. But, unfortunately, the difficulties in attempts to unite 

 the teeth and bones are frequently embarrassing, owing to the association of remains of 

 two or more species. 



No more pointed instance of an involved collection, made, doubtless, under many 

 difficulties, can be adduced than that brought together by Palconer and Cantley in the 

 Sewalik Hills. 8 This may be owing to precise records not having been made during the 



1 Boyd Dawkins, 'Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,' vol. xxxv, p. 139. 



2 Lartet, ' Bullet. Societ. Geol. de France,' 3rd series, t. xvi, p. 500. 



3 Vast quantities of spinal and appendicular elements of Mastodons and Elephants from the above 

 situations, are now in the British Museum, but in the absence of typical examples, it is at present 

 impossible to assign any single bone to its appropriate cranium and molar. 



