14 PACHYDERM ATA. 



onus, also resting upon a lower jaw, was distinguished by its 

 supposed small size, by the absence of the beak apophysis, and by 

 the rhomboid section presented by the plates of the grinders. 

 Cuvier refused to admit either of Nesti's species. The lower jaw 

 of the first he pronounced to belong rather to Mastodon angusti- 

 dens than to an Elephant ; and the second to be nothing more 

 than the lower jaw of a young individual. 1 Nesti, after a long 

 silence, reverted to the subject in 1825, in a memoir which 

 embodied the results of extensive observations carefully made 

 during seventeen years. 2 He tacitly admits the justness of 

 Cuvier's criticism in regard to the second species, by abandoning 

 E. minimus ; but in confirmation of his first species he adduces 

 a great mass of evidence derived from numerous crania of all 

 ages, from the foetus up to the adult ; and from lower jaws in the 

 Florence and other Tuscan musea, — all of which, he affirms, show 

 the peculiar beak elongation of the symphysis in connection with 

 Elephant's teeth. The result of the whole was to remove every 

 doubt or hesitation from his mind regarding the distinctness of 

 the Tuscan species, for which he proposes the specific name of 

 E. meridionalis. 



The value of the evidence regarding this species will be more 

 fully considered in the sequel. Nesti's opinion, however, has met 

 with little favour among palaeontologists. Croizet and Jobert have 

 adopted it for some of the elephant remains found in Auvergne, 3 

 and the name finds a place in the enumeration of species 

 given in von Meyer's ' Palaeologica.' 4 But it is not admitted 

 by Bronn, 5 de Blainville, 6 or Pictet; 7 and it would appear from 

 certain passages in the ' British Fossil Mammalia,' that the great 

 weight of Professor Owen's authority is against it. 8 



1 Cuvier, Oss. Fossiles, torn. i. p. 186. 



2 Nesti, Nuovo Giornale de Letterat. Pisa, 1825, torn. xi. p. 119. 



3 Croizet et Jobert, Oss. Foss. du Puy-de-D6me, 1828, p. 123. 



4 Von Meyer, Palaeologica, 1832, p. 69. 



5 Bronn, Lethaea Geognostica, 1838, p. 1245. 



6 De Blainville, Osteographie ; Elephants, p. 220. 



7 Pictet, Palaeontologie, 1844, torn. i. p. 243. 

 * Owen, Brit. Foss. Mamm. p. 239. 



