68 
BRITISH FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 
As regards the long bones, it would seem that as compared with the Mammoth the 
humerus and femur are stouter in E. antiquus; and this stoutness was, doubtless, the main 
feature in its general outline. At the same time the E. meridionalis was not only of 
colossal dimensions, but, judging from the relative thickness of its bones, presented a like 
proportional stoutness, so that it is impossible at present to say to which form the 
Elephantine bones from the Forest Bed belong, as teeth of the two species are often found 
together. Indeed, the relative connections between varieties of the broad crown of the 
molar of E. antiquus, and certain teeth ascribed to E. meridionalis, are striking and cannot 
be determined with certainty until the dentition and osteology of the latter have been 
carefully worked out. 
It seems apparent from the data here advanced that the Proboscidian, to which the 
name Elephas antiquus has been given, lived in Britain before the Glacial epoch along 
with an allied form, E. meridionalis, and that both, judging from the quantities of their 
remains met with in Southern Europe, were southern and probably eastern forms with 
pedigrees extending backwards into Miocene times, as shadowed forth by their 
congeners from the deposits of Northern India. 
It is further established that the Elephas antiquus survived the Ice Age, and 
flourished subsequently along with the Mammoth on British soil. Unlike the latter, it 
has not hitherto been traced to the Arctic regions nor to North America; perhaps it was 
not suited for boreal regions, and may have only so journeyed in England after the 
cold period had passed away. That it was a distinct species or form from the Mammoth 
cannot, I think, be doubted; at all events, the dental and apparently the osteological 
characters are as broadly distinctive as those which obtain between the two species now 
living in Asia and Africa. 
