MONOGRAPH 
ON THE 
BRITISH FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 
ELEJFHJS ANTIQUUS. 
I.—INTRODUCTORY. 
The history of the discovery of the remains of the Elephant described in this Memoir has 
been narrated by Dr. Falconer in his masterly essay on ' The Species of Mastodon and 
Elephant occurring in the Fossil State in Great Britain.’ 1 It seems important here, how¬ 
ever, to indicate certain points in connection with the discovery. Up to the year 1844 
all remains of Elephants met with in the Tertiary formations of the British Islands were 
considered to belong to the Elephasprimigenius? At that time Dr. Falconer was engaged 
in arranging and describing the rich harvest of Tertiary Yertebrata collected by himself, 
Sir Proby Cautley, Mr. Eraser, and others, in the Tertiary beds of the Sub-Himalaya 
and river deposits of Central India. During the preparation of the 1 Fauna Antiqua 
Sivalensis,’ which began to be issued during the following year, he was struck with the 
resemblance between molars from India and certain teeth of Elephants found in the 
Norwich Crag and deposits of the Thames Valley; moreover, it seemed to him that the 
molars from the Thames Valley agreed with similar teeth discovered by Nesti in 
Tuscany as far back as 1808. It is asserted, however, by Dr. Falconer that at that 
time he was not sufficiently conversant with the foreign specimens ; inasmuch as, instead 
of connecting the Norwich Crag molars with those from the deposits of Tuscany, he made a 
mistake and correlated the molars from the Thames Valley and the latter under the name 
Elepltas meridionalis of Nesti, whilst to the owner of the teeth from the older British 
strata he gave the name of Elepltas antiquus. This mistake, unfortunately, was per¬ 
petuated in the representations of the two species published in the 1 Fauna Antiqua 
l 1 Journal Geological Society of London,’ vols. xiii, xiv, and xxi, reprinted in the ‘ Palaeontological 
Memoirs of the late Dr. Falconer,’ vol. ii. 
3 Owen, ‘ British Fossil Mammals,’ p. 232. 
1 
