34 
BRITISH FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 
holding two plates each. Both were also remarkable for the thickness of the enamel and 
dentine, so characteristic of this type of molar. The specimens were found in Ballarat 
Pit, near Oxford. 
There have been four late additions to the splendid collection of proboscidian remains 
in the British Museum, from Cromer Forest Bed and the Pleistocene Deposits near 
Peterborough. The latter represent a right and left upper molar, apparently from the 
same individual; neither is quite entire. The right, No. 47,121, B. M., I have selected 
as an excellent illustration of this variety ; it is shown, half natural size, in the crown and 
plan views, Plate II, figs. 3 and 3 a. There is a loss of ridges posteriorly in the above, 
leaving fifteen ridges in 10 inches. The left tooth, No. 47,120, has fifteen ridges in 9'6 
inches, the greatest breadth of crown being 3 inches respectively. The maximum height of 
the tenth ridge is 7'6 inches. The crowns are worn obliquely, and on that account they 
have the appearance of the crown of E. Asiaticus. The excess in the intervening cement, 
the thickness of the enamel, excessive crimping, with angulations and expansions here 
and there, are very pronounced and diagnostic of the variety of molar in question. It is 
clear, moreover, that if the above teeth were ground down nearly to the enamel reflections 
there would be a much greater expansion of the disk, approaching the rhomb-shaped 
dilatation of the so-called E. prisons. In fig. 3 a there is an intercalation of finger-like 
ridglets on the sides of the tooth, such as are often noticed in ultimate molars of other 
species ; x moreover, with the exception of the central expansions and angulations, the 
fluted enamel gives the crown quite the aspect of that of the Asiatic Elephant. 
The Cromer specimens, No. 47,119, are right and left lower; the latter is shown 
crown and profile, half natural size, in PI. Ill, figs. 1 and 1 a. They have lost one or 
two of the ultimate ridges, retaining x 17 in 12'5 inches. 
The first eleven ridges are invaded, showing large mesial expansions, crimpings, 
and the angulations, which, however, do not touch each other or overlap as often obtains 
in E. Africanus. 
The teeth are much arcuated and narrow, with a maximum breadth of crown of 2'7 
inches. The eleventh ridge, the digitations of which are just invaded, is 7'5 inches in 
height. The large, round, and curved anterior fang is well preserved on the left molar, 
fig. 1 a, and supports three ridges, succeeded by a coalescence of the remaining ridges. 
Here, again, the plates are colossal, each averaging one inch in breadth, with well-defined 
transverse rugae on the enamel. 
There is a fragment of the crown of what had been evidently a left upper molar in Mr. 
Gunn’s collection, and from the Norwich Crag at Horstead, where heretofore only remains 
of E. meridionalis and Mastodon are said to have turned up. The morsel is nearly worn 
down to the enamel reflections and was evidently a tooth on the point of being shed. The 
1 See ‘British Fossil Mammals,’ fig. 90, where an enormous lower molar of E. Asiaticus (not 
E. primigenius) has numerous accessory ridges on its sides and posteriorly. I found the same in ultimate 
teeth of E. Mnaidriensis. Dr. Falconer, however, supposes the condition to be a morbid state, and 
confined to domesticated elephants, ‘Pal. Mem.,’ vol. ii, p. 281. 
