36 
BRITISH FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 
examined also on the occasion alluded to: and Baron Anca presented me with 
a lithographic plate containing a representation of the above, and also of molars of 
E. antiquus discovered by him in the caverns of Palermo. The right lower molar in 
question is contained in a portion of a ramus, but is much fractured both anteriorly and 
posteriorly. There are seven plates, the disks of five being entire, in a length of 5 inches, 
which allows about 0'7 inch for the thickness of each plate. 
The central expansions are rhomb-shaped, but not nearly to the extent usually 
observed in molars of the African Elephant, with angulations which almost touch, but do 
not, as in the latter, overlap or meet. There is crimping of the enamel ; and, altogether from 
these and other considerations in connection with left ramus containing the entire third 
milk molar (fig. 8 of the same plate) discovered also in the Cave of San Teodoro in the 
same deposits, and referred to by me at page 19, and from the fact that the evidence of 
the thick-plated molar of E. antiquus has been much augmented by later discoveries, I am 
bound to acknowledge that the opinion I entertained in common with these two 
distinguished anatomists, as to the proofs of the African Elephant having been found in 
a fossil state, has, at all events as regards the Cave of San Teodoro, been altogether 
shaken by more recent discoveries. It would be premature at present to speculate on the 
value of the other two instances; but whether or not E. antiquus was the ancestor from 
whence E. Africanus has been derived, there is no positive evidence furnished by the 
above materials from Sicilian deposits to show that they belong to the latter species. 
I have digressed somewhat from the strict rule in connection with the description 
here of only British fossils, but it will be apparent that determinations so important with 
reference to the discovery of the recent species of Elephants in a fossil state have an intimate 
connection with extinct forms. I have therefore recorded these instances for the purpose 
of confirming the results obtained from studies of the thick-plated tooth of E. antiquus 
found in British strata. 
The question suggested by a study of the thick-plated variety of molar is whether or 
not it has been discovered in connection with the other teeth of E. antiquus, or under 
conditions likely to give rise to a race or permanent variety of the species. The fact of 
its discovery in the fluviatile deposits throughout the Valley of the Thames, in 
connection with the foregoing specimens, shows that the various forms of molars belonged 
in all likelihood to contemporaneous individuals, and, as before indicated in the case of 
the grinders of the Mammoth and Maltese Elephants, to which further reference will be 
made in the sequel, there were thick- and thin-plated varieties, possibly occasional or 
sexual conditions. Moreover, the three varieties have been met with in the Pre- and 
Inter-Glacial Deposits of the Norfolk Coast, where, however, vast epochs of time 
may be represented; but, indeed, there are few well-established evidences of the exact stra- 
tigraphical arrangement of the specimens from this coast either as regards the National 
Museum, or the valuable relics brought together by Miss Gurney, Mr. Gunn, Mr. Fitch, 
and others. 
