FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
47 
At length., in November, 1861, Mr. Blake makes his appearance 
about this fossil Elephant. In a paper * on the distribution of Mas¬ 
todon in South America,’ the following sentence occurs, in sequence 
to remarks on the remains of JE. primigenius in North America: 
“ South of the 30th degree of N. latitude it” (the Mammoth), “how- 
“ ever, gives place to a totally different species of true Elephant 
“ (JElephas Texianus , Owen, JE. Columbi, Ealconer), the molars of 
,£ which by their less degree of complexity were more adapted to 
“ triturate the soft succulent herbage of Texas and Mexico.”* Here 
it will be observed, the name JE. Texianus , is, with propriety, so far 
• as published evidence goes, attributed to the author, who had four 
years before become responsible for it. But in February of the 
Arvernensis and Mastodori longirostris, the following sentence occurs: “Both belong 
“ to that section of Mastodon, in which the first and second true molars have each 
“four transverse ridges,” (Foot-note. “First demonstrated by Kaup, ‘ Ossemens 
“‘Fossiles de Darmstadt, 4to. 1835,’) “and for which Dr. Falconer proposes the 
“ name Tetralophodon.” (Op. cit. 2nd. edit. p. 387.) I challenge the production 
from the work cited, of any passage containing the demonstration asserted in the 
note; it is certainly nowhere to be found there: even the word section, or any other 
equivalent term, expressive of the idea of a subdivision of the genus into groups does 
not occur in it, and for the simple reason, that published materials to suggest it, 
did not at the time exist. I was the first to generalise on the subject, and establish 
the constancy of the ternary and quaternary ridge-formula) in the Mastodons as a 
means of ranging all the known species, under the two natural groups of Trilophodon 
and Tetralophodon ; I further extended the same principle of the ridge-formula, to 
the arrangement of the rest of the Proboscidian forms, or Elephants, under the 
divisions of Stegodori, Loxodon , and Euelephas. Until then, the species were in 
extreme confusion; and nowhere was this more signally evinced than in the writings 
of Professor Owen on the family. Kaup, with characteristic fairness, recognises the 
fact, in reference to the Mastodons. In proof, I refer to his ‘ Beitraege,’ 3. Heft. 
(1857) pp. 1, 19. What Kaup vehemently claims as his special discovery, is, that he 
was the first to show the precise number of molar teeth, that succeed each other 
from back to front in Mastodon (excluding premolars, i. e. vertical successors); and 
that his observation on that genus, furnished the cue for determining the same series 
in the Elephants. The ‘ Ossemens Fossiles de Darmstadt,’ is freely quoted in the 
‘ Odontography’ and in the ‘ British Fossil Mammalia,’ both published ten years 
later; yet it is not a little singular, that the demonstration asserted in the note, did 
not prevent Professor Owen from confounding, under the common designation of 
Mastodon augustidens, the dentitition of three distinct species of Mastodon, one of 
them belonging to the section Trilophodon, and two to the section Tetralophodon. 
Further, in the same work, ‘Palaeontology,’ Sismonda’s figure of the Astesan 
Mastodon, is reproduced, as the principal illustration of the genus, under the mis¬ 
nomer of M. Turicensis, and described as having ternary-ridged molars, like M. 
OMoticus, notwithstanding that Sismonda,§ confirmed by myself after a detailed 
examination, figures and describes it as quaternary- ridged: M. Turicensis, (a 
synonym of M. Tapiraides of the French palaeontologists) being a miocene species 
of the Dinotherian type, and the Astesan Mastodon, {M Arvernensis ) a pliocene 
species of another type. These and other like errors, which I could adduce, are 
brought out in a work professing to be an exposition of the science at the present 
day. But with reference to the ‘ Bollaert’ and ‘ Kaup’ citations here challenged, it 
is necessary to direct attention to the reprehensible practice of citing known works. 
for matter, the existence of which cannot be traced in them. 
§ ‘ Osteographia di un Mastodonte Augustidente.’ Turin, 1851. 4to. p. 23, 
line 10. PI. I. fig 2. 
* Geologist, 1861. Yol. iv. p. 470. 
