ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELEPHANT. 287 



only necessary to saw the tooth of an Asiatic elephant, close to the root. 

 I am strongly of opinion, that it is on some circumstance analogous to 

 this, that M.-Dcehne and M. Strombeck ground their assertion of 

 the similarity existing between the teeth of the African elephant and 

 some of those found at Thiede *. 



But the mistakes which have been occasioned by the partial plates 

 of the germs of the molars of elephants found separate and unworn, 

 have been by far the most gross and ridiculous. 



The ancient naturalists, who generally considered fossils as so many 

 figured stones, found in these plates some resemblance to a foot or a 

 hand, and gave them the name of chirites. Kircher gives drawings of 

 some under this head, in his Subterranean World, vol. ii, p. 64. There 

 are others of a similar description in his Museum, and in the Museum 

 Metallicum Vaticanum of Mercati. 



Aldrovandus gives .drawings of some under the same name. (De Me- 

 tallic, lib. iv, p. 481). 



But nothing of this description can approach in absurdity what we 

 find in the Rariora Naturae et Artis of Kimdmann, pi. 3, fig. 2. That 

 author describes the object represented by his figure as the petrified 

 jaw of some great baboon ; he assures us that the skin, the flesh, 

 the nails, and the veins may be plainly discerned completely pe- 

 trified; that M. Fischer, professor at Kcenigsberg, who had seen 

 most of the museums in Europe, pronounced this petrifaction to be 

 one of the rarest in the world ; and finally, that the king of Poland, 

 and the elector of Saxony, had offered him a considerable sum for 

 it, with a view of placing it in the Museum of Dresden. In his 

 Commentary on the Works of Knorr, Walch cites this fragment among 

 the petrified bones of apes, &c; and yet a single glance is sufficient to 

 show us that it is nothing more than the plate of the molar of an 

 elephant, not yet worn at its extremity, and disjointed from the rest of 

 the tooth. However, this error has been rectified already by Harrer, 

 an apothecary of Ratisbon, in the Correspondence des Savans de 

 Kohl . 



With regard to the entire molares being those parts of the ele- 

 phent most frequently to be met with in the fossil state, the questions 

 which at first presented themselves were the following : — 



1st. To which of the tico species of living elephants the fossil molares 

 bear the greatest resemblance ? 



2nd. Do they bear a perfect resemblance to either of them ? 



3rd. Do all the fossil molares resemble each other ? 



About the first question there can be no doubt. The greater num- 

 ber of fossil teeth — 'indeed one might say all, or nearly all — resemble 

 at first sight those of India, and like them they are formed of stripes of 

 equal breadth, and are wreathed. This may be ascertained by exa- 

 mining plate 1 2 of this work, where I have given drawings of both upper 

 and under fossil tooth of different ages, at half their natural size. 



Fig. 1 is the lower tooth of an aged elephant. It is very much worn, 



* Dohne in the Annals of Gilbert, No. 11, 1817 ; and in the Universal Bible of 

 Geneva, February, 1818. See also Strombeck, loc. cit,, p. 428. 



