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enamel ; but the enamel in the Siberian Mammoth, though more plicated 

 than in the American one, is less so than in the Asiatic Elephant : in an 

 anteroposterior extent of six inches of the grinding surface of the 

 Asiatic Elephant's grinder, selected for comparison with the present 

 specimen, there are ten transverse plates, the greatest breadth of that 

 surface being two inches nine lines, whilst in the present Mammoth's 

 tooth it is three inches and a half. 



From the drift or pleistocene beds of Siberia. Hunterian. 



The principal variety to which the molars of the extinct Elephant or 

 Mammoth were subject, is demonstrated by the foregoing series to be in 

 the number of the transverse clefts of the crown, and consequently in 

 the number and thickness of the component plates. The various degrees 

 of this variety have been differently interpreted by different Palaeon- 

 tologists. Parkinson, Fischer, Goldfuss, Nesti and Von Meyer have 

 deduced therefrom some of the characters for the eight distinct species 

 of Mammoth which they suppose to have formerly roamed over the 

 temperate latitudes of Europe and Asia : the differences in the structure 

 of the Mammoth's molars observed by Cuvier were regarded by him as 

 individual varieties. 



We find, in regard to the number and thickness of the coronal plates, 

 that the variations are more numerous, as the average number of the 

 plates characterizing the molar teeth of acknowledged distinct species of 

 Elephant is greater. 



Thus, in the African Elephant, in which the lozenge-shaped plates are 

 always much fewer and thicker than are the flattened ones in the Indian 

 species, the variation, which can be detected in any number of their 

 grinders, is very slight. In the Asiatic Elephant, which, besides the dif- 

 ference in the shape of the plates, has always thinner and more numerous 

 plates than the African one, a greater amount of variation in both these 

 characters obtains ; but it is always necessary to bear in mind the caution 

 which Cuvier recommended to Camper, that a large molar of an old 

 Elephant is not to be compared with a small molar of a young one in 

 reference to their variety, or otherwise there will appear to be a much 



