ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS—INTRODUCTION. 
3 
species of Elephant and another is impracticable in several instances; for example, 
although the ordinary true grinder of the Mammoth, E. cmtiqims , and E. meridionalis, 
can be easily distinguished when entire and the crown-sculpturing fully developed; still, 
there are varieties of crowns in these and other species barely distinguishable from one 
another. In making this statement I by no means desire to advance an opinion that 
the above-mentioned forms are mere varieties of one species of Elephant, such as is usually 
understood by the term species. At the same time, considering the conditions under 
which Pliocene and Pleistocene Elephants existed as compared with their living represen¬ 
tatives, it seems to me that their dentitions and osteologies are likely to exhibit more 
extensive modifications ; indeed, the variability in connection with the dental materials, 
here referred to E. antiquus, has no equal, as far as I am able to discover, in the denti¬ 
tion of either of the two recent Elephants. 
In the ‘ Synoptical Table of the Species of Mastodon and Elephant ’ published by 
Dr. Ealconer in 1857 1 he divides the Genus Elephas into the sub-genera Stegodon, 
Loxodon, and Euelephas, and characterises each sub-genus by certain dental peculiarities. 
The Elephas antiquus is included, along with E. primigenius, E. Indians, E. Columhi, 
E. Armeniacus, E. Namadicus, and E. Hysudricus, in the last sub-genus, which is 
split up into four groups, in the second of which he places the E. antiquus and 
E. Namadicus. 
The definition of the sub-genus Euelephas by the author is —“ Dentium molarium 
3 utrinque intermediorum coronis lamellosa colliculis deinceps numero auctis, ani- 
someris, attenuatis, compressis. PrEemolares nulli.” 
The dental characters common to the Elephas antiquus and Elephas Namadicus are 
—“ Colliculi approximati medio leviter dilatati, machaeridibus undulatis.” 
With reference to these distinctions, as peculiar to the E. antiquus and E. Namadicus } 
although general, they cannot be accepted as invariable, as is shown by the admission 
subsequently, by the author, of the loxodontine type of E. prisons as a variety of the 
above, and the absence of central dilatation in the “ broad-crowned ” variety of the 
Elephas antiquus. Indeed, central expansion and angulation, as will be shown in the 
sequel, are occasionally met with in certain molars of all or nearly all the living and extinct 
Elephants hitherto discovered ; moreover, these, as well as the other characters, are shown 
in all the Maltese fossil Elephants which Ealconer correlated with the Loxodontes, 2 but 
now from data I have furnished elsewhere they come closer to the Eulephas or the 
anisomerous ridge formula. 3 
The close affinities between Elephas antiquus and the Elephas Namadicus seem to 
have been the cause of Dr. Falconer first calling in question the teeth from British strata, 
which had been hitherto correlated with those of the Mammoth ; indeed, looking to the 
figures and descriptions he has left behind him, it seems to me remarkable that he 
1 ‘Pal. Mem.,’ vol. ii, p. 14. 3 Idem, p. 298. 3 1 Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.,’ vol. ix, p. 36. 
