ELEPHANT AND MASTODON. 27 



under the name of M. Sivalensis, 1 a detailed account of which will 

 be given in this work. 



Professor Owen has proposed the provisional name of M. 

 Australis, 2 for a form which rests upon a solitary specimen, 

 brought from Australia. We shall have occasion to refer to this 

 specimen in the sequel. 



The grounds upon which Cuvier technically rested his generic 

 distinction between Mastodon and Elephas having been invalidated 

 by the discovery of the species named M. Elephantoides by 

 Clift, it became necessary for systematic authors either to unite 

 them under a single generic name, or to devise other diagnostic 

 characters for their separation. Bronn, in his ' Lethsea,' gives an 

 elaborate definition of the two genera founded upon the observa- 

 tions of his countrymen, Kaup and von Meyer, on the European 

 species, and of the American naturalists upon M. Ohioticus. 

 He characterizes Mastodon 3 by inferior tusks ; by the presence 

 simultaneously of a greater number of grinders in each jaw ; and 

 by the expulsion of the anterior tooth in the young animal by a 

 vertically succeeding premolar. The distinctive characters of 

 Elephas he defines to be, the absence of inferior tusks ; a less 

 number of more complex grinders at one time in the jaws ; and 

 the uniform antero-posterior succession of the whole series of 

 molars without a vertical premolar. M. de Blainville, in his great 

 work, 4 has given the most full and detailed account of the species 

 of both genera, that has appeared since the publication of the 

 ' Ossemens Fossiles,' and endeavoured, by original observation 

 and by the collation of information drawn from every accessible 

 source, to make his memoir a monograph of the subject, brought 

 up to the state of our knowledge at the present day. Having 

 satisfactorily proved that the number of molar teeth, developed in 

 antero-posterior succession, in the Elephant, does not differ from 

 that of the Mastodon, as had been previously supposed, he insists 



1 Journ. Asiat. Soc. of Beng. vol. v. p. 294. 



2 Ann. of Nat. Hist. xiv. 1844, p. 296. 



* Lethaea Geognostica, 1838, Band ii. p. 1233-1240. 



* Osteographie, ' Des Elephants,' Fascic. xvi. 



