ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS—TRUE MOLARS. 
23 
A lower molar from Oundle, Northamptonshire, with nine and a half ridges in a 
space of 7 inches, with thick plates on an average 0■!) inch per plate, might belong to the 
above, or else the second true molar. It is very characteristic of the species, but it is 
too much mutilated to allow its position in the series to be determined with certainty. 
No. 27,906, B. M., from Clacton deposits, is an upper molar, with a highly digitated 
posterior, and a very fragmentary anterior talon; it holds x 11 x in 8 inches. 
Other examples are numerous, such as a tooth from the Mendip caves in the 
Taunton Collection, referred to in Falconer’s notes; it holds x 12 x in 7'2 inches. He 
has also figured a broken tooth, which seems to have held twelve to thirteen ridges in a 
space of about 7'5 inches. 1 
In the Jermyn Street Museum there is an entire upper first true molar from a cutting 
of the Great Northern Railway in Huntingdonshire. The crown, although just invaded 
and with none of the digitations worn out, is narrow, and altogether typical of the species. 
It furnishes a formula of a? 10 x in 7'5 inches. 
In the same collection there is an upper molar, with only its first three ridges invaded, 
from river deposits under St. James’s Square, London ; it holds x 12 x in 7 - 5 inches. 
The crown is also narrow. 
The portion of a mandible containing a much worn molar discovered on Palling 
Beach, near Happisborough, and now in the Norwich Museum with the remainder of 
Mr. Gunn’s splendid collection, is one of the two specimens on which Dr. Falconer 
founded the presence of E. priscus of Goldfuss, in British strata. The fact that Falconer 
mistook the characters of these teeth is sufficient to show that they differed very much 
from the ordinary or typical tooth of E. antiquus, at all events, as then known to him. 
In the essay on “ British and European Fossil Elephants,” as also in the plates in his 
Memoirs, 3 Dr. Falconer goes into minute details with reference to this mandible and tooth. 
The specimen he considers to represent a well-worn second true molar ; and, seeing that 
at the time he correlated it with the Loxodontes, the ridge formula could scarcely have 
admitted a larger figure than eight or nine plates besides talons. The tooth has been recently 
fixed in its socket so that the fangs cannot now be studied, but the representation in the 
plate referred to shows an anterior fang supporting two ridges, followed by two other 
fangs and a large curving posterior root sustaining three plates ; there are clear indica¬ 
tions of broken and worn-out ridges in front and deep pressure marks behind. Consider¬ 
ing, therefore, that the anterior fang is now supporting two ridges, I am much inclined 
to consider this fragmentary tooth to be an antepen- instead of a pen -ultimate true molar, 
and that it may have lost four and a half of its ridges, there being seven and a half 
remaining in space of 6'4 inches. Whichever it may be, there can be little doubt as to 
its claims to a position among the teeth of E. antiquus. Although the plates are thicker 
antero-posteriorly, especially in the middle, with angular expansions and dilatations, the 
1 ‘I 1 . A. S.,’ pi. xiv a, figs. 4 and 4 a. 
2 Vol. ii, p. 100. The tooth is shown detached from the jaw in pi. vii, figs. 3 and 4, of the same volume. 
