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was the petrified paw of a large baboon, but that the skin, flesh, nails, 
and veins, were all discoverable in it, in a petrified state*. Even the 
accurate Walch refers to this specimen as a real petrifaction of the apef . 
I must here suggest to you the propriety of referring, previous to 
our examination of these fossil remains, to the ingenious observations 
of Mr. Home and of Mr. Corse, on the formation of the teeth of the 
elephant. Philos. Trans. 1799. By an attention to these observa- 
tions, we are of course enabled to form a more correct judgment as 
to their fossil remains. 
From the information thus gained we learn, that the bodies of which 
we have just spoken, and which the older ory otologists considered as 
petrified hands, were the separated plates of which the grinders are 
composed : the more extended parts of these productions having been 
supposed to be the fingers. The unorganized and looser substance 
of the cortical crust disintegrates sooner than the two substances of 
which the plates are formed ; hence, in most fossil teeth, this sub- 
stance is in a very loose state, and in some it has been quite removed, 
and has left the plates entirely unconnected. 
It is but at a very late period that the specific differences of the teeth 
of the East-Indian and African elephant have been attended to. These 
differences consist in the form and number of the plates. In the East- 
Indian, the two wide surfaces of the plates are flat, and covered with 
numerous rough longitudinal striae ; whilst, in the African, there is on 
both of the wide surfaces an angular projection through their whole 
length, and the striae are much less numerous. The masticating surface 
shows that the transverse bands, which in the tooth of the East-Indian 
elephant are straight, and all through of an equal width, are, in the tooth 
of the African, more in the form of a lozenge ; or, much wider in the 
middle than at their ends. From these lateral projections, the African 
teeth must necessarily have much fewer plates than the East-Indian. 
* Rarior. Nat. et Ant. PI. ill. Fig. 2. 
f Monumens des Catast. Tome II. Part 2, p. ISO. 
