1834.] from the Omar Nadi, near Narsinhpur. 397 



More than this, — I believe, from an inspection of Cuvier's plates, that 

 the two femurs of the elephant now on the table are as perfect as, if not 

 superior to, any of the sort in the celebrated museum of Paris. 



I will now hazard a few observations on the remains of the Nar- 

 sinhpur or Segauni elephant. 



It may be looked upon as most fortunate that the two bones of this 

 animal, selected for dispatch, are the right and left femora, since it 

 is principally upon the conformation of the condyles of the femur that 

 Cuvier has decided the specific difference of the fossil or extinct, from 

 the existing, varieties of the elephant. 



I stated on the examination of the fossil jaw-bone of another elephant 

 from the Brimhdn Ghat near Jabalpur, side by side with a recent jaw in our 

 museum, that it was impossible to discover any such distinction as should 

 constitute a difference of species*. But the case is very different now : the 

 magnitude, as well as the peculiarities of structure, of the present animal, 

 at once pronounce it to be the " mammoth," or elephas primigenius of 

 Blumenbach. The head is not forthcoming to confirm this conjecture, 

 having, according to the tradition of the village, been washed down the 

 river seventy years ago : one tooth only was obtained from a Thakur 

 in the neighbourhood, but that has not yet reached us : — Dr. Row 

 (to whose care we are indebted for the dispatch of the specimens from 

 Benares) writes, that he has sent it by another opportunity : however, 

 the expressions and drawings of Cuvier accord so perfectly with the 

 bone before us, that no reasonable doubt can be entertained even in the 

 absence of the teeth. He thus describes its conformation : 



" La tete inferieure du femur m'a fourni un caractere distinctif tres- 

 sensible dans son tfchancrure entre les deux condyles, qui se reduit a une 

 ligne ^troite," (see figures 5 and 6,) " au lieu d'un large enfoncement 

 qu'on voit dans les deux especes vivantes," (see figures 2 and 8.) 



The peculiarity was remarked in the Siberian mammoth, in the 

 fossil elephant of Constadt, in that of Florence, and in all others, indeed, 

 which were examined by this eminent naturalist ; and here we find the 

 same characteristic in another individual at this distant part of the globe. 

 Doctor J. Tytler has obligingly furnished me with the femur ofa mo- 

 dern elephant, to render the comparison more obvious. (It is depicted 

 as fig. 1 of the plate, in an exact relative proportion to the fossil bones.) 



Doctor Tytler's bone belongs to a young animal, if the detachment 

 of the epiphysis be taken as a test of its age ; but the same detachment 

 is apparent in the round head of the left fossil femur also (fig. 9,) and 

 in the condyles of another very large specimen, distinct from the other 



• Vol. ii.p. 585. 



