FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
109 
What, then, was the nature of the food of the Mammoth ? In 
speculating on this question, we have for our guidance—1st, the me¬ 
chanical properties of the molar crowns as a disintegrating apparatus; 
2nd, the analogy of the living species ; 3rd, the climate and implied 
vegetation of the habitat of the extinct animal. 
Regarded as an instrument for crunching and contusing the woody 
fibre and tough bark of trees, the crown of the molar in the Indian 
Elephant is manifestly much more powerful than that of the Mam¬ 
moth. The elements which determine the ratio of force in the com¬ 
parison, are the strength, projection, and number of the enamel edges, 
the ivory and cement being, in the mechanical aspect, but the setting 
in which the plates are fixed. In the molar of the Indian Elephant, 
they are like the edges of thick plates of corrugated iron, having a 
considerable amount of relief; while in the Mammoth they are like 
the edges of thinner flat plates of the same metal, barely elevated 
above their level setting, but more numerous, in the same extent of 
grinding surface, in the ratio of 5 to 4. In the former, the tough and 
ligneous matter which it is known to select for its food, tell upon the 
triturating elements, as might be predicated, in the ratio of their 
densities. The soft cement is worn lowest, the plate of ivory forms a 
depressed band, and the enamel plates project over both—the wider 
intervals by which they are separated contributing to facilitate the 
mechanical result required in the case. In the Mammoth the plane 
of the setting remains flat, and the enamel-edges are but slightly in 
relief above it. The molar in the palate of a Mammoth from Esch- 
scholtz-bay, in the Palaeontological gallery of the British Museum, 
may be cited in illustration. If hard woody fibre entered more 
largely into the food of the fossil than it does into that of the exist¬ 
ing species, it is difficult to conceive why corresponding mechanical 
results should not have followed, in the greater proportional erosion 
of the cement. 
It has been argued, and the reasoning has met with very general 
acceptance, # that “ if we find in an extinct Elephant the same pecu- 
“ liar principle of construction in the molar teeth ” (i.e. as in the living 
forms), “ but with augmented complexity, arising from a greater 
“ number of triturating plates, and a greater proportion of the dense 
“ enamel, the inference is plain, that the ligneous fibre must have 
is presented by a last true molar of the upper jaw, preserved in the Woodwardian 
Museum of Cambridge, in which the five last plates are contorted and crowded on 
one side. It might serve for the molar of a Mammoth which had been in bondage 
to man of the early ‘ Flint-knife’ period. But a natural cause of this condition is 
intelligible, on the supposition that the molar which preceded it was not opposed by 
a corresponding tooth in the lower jaw ; a deficiency which is known to occur, from 
disease or accident, both in living and extinct forms. 
* The deduction here referred to has been adopted by the distinguished authors 
of the ‘ Geology of Russia,’ in their disquisition on the ‘ Habitation and Destruc¬ 
tion of the Mammoths’ with a vciy high estimate of its importance, as a result of 
palaeontological research. Op. cit. Yol. i. p. 497. 
