ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS—TRUE MOLARS. 
35 
plane of attrition passes through the broadest portion of the plate, so that-the disk is rela¬ 
tively broader in the antero-posterior direction than would obtain at any other point in a 
transverse section, and looks precisely as in E.prisons, with marked crimping and thickness 
of the enamel. There are 65 ridges in 5 inches. Considering, however, the above state¬ 
ment, it would be wrong to place the fragment with E. antiquus, seeing that crimping, 
mesial expansion and angulation of disks are sometimes pronounced in specimens of E. 
meridionalis; it is suggestive, however, with reference to further discoveries in the 
Norwich Crag. 
I think fragmentary teeth, especially well-worn crowns of the thick-plated variety, 
are very liable to become confounded with molars of E. Africanus, but no cautious 
observer should come to a conclusion either way on such evidence, unless the characters 
are clear beyond doubt. 
I can find no record or discover any ultimate molar of E. Africanus with a larger 
ridge formula than x 13a?; indeed, in far the greatest number of specimens it seldom 
exceeds x 11 x. 
The evidence of Ealconer 1 and Lartet, 2 that fossil molars discovered near Madrid, 
Syracuse, and Palermo, were determined by them as belonging to Elep/ias Africanus, is 
of such importance in connection with this E.priscus variety of E. antiquus as met with 
in British strata, that some account must be taken here of the instances on which their 
diagnoses were founded. I am unable to verify from personal examination the teeth 
discovered in Spain and at Syracuse, 3 but the two almost worn-out morsels'* of teeth 
referred to by Falconer and represented by Baron Anca, who found them in the Cave of 
San Teodoro, as also a crown containing several plates, which the latter assured me was 
discovered in digging a sewer in one of the chief streets of Palermo, were carefully 
examined by me during a visit to Sicily in 1864, subsequently to that of Dr. Falconer. 
With reference to these Sicilian teeth represented in figs. 5 and 6 of plate xi of 
the seventeenth volume of the ‘ Bulletin of the Geological Society of France,’ and 
described at pp. 689 and 694, it appears to me that, as one contains only an entire disk 
and the other the outer, or else the inner, third of an antero-posterior section of a crown 
with only portions of three disks, even allowing their wide expansion and general 
thickness of the enamel, it would be premature, on such slender evidence, to assert their 
identity with teeth of E. Africanus, especially after the data here adduced of the thick- 
plated teeth of E. antiquus. Moreover, the planes of detrition in these two fragments 
pass exactly, as before stated, through the lower and thickest portion of the crown. 
A more suggestive instance is represented by the other specimen, which I 
1 ‘Pal. Mem.,’ vol. ii, p. 283. 
2 ‘Comptes Rendus,’ 22 Fev., 1858, tom. xlvi. 
3 The latter is described by Canon Alessi in vol. vii of the ‘Atti dell’ Accad. di Scienz. Nat.,’ and is 
quoted by Falconer. 
4 Plate xi, figs. 5 and 6, p. 684, vol. xvii, ‘Bullet. Soc. Geol. de France’ (2e serie) ; vol. xviii, p. 90, 
in a letter to M. Lartet. 
