ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS.—TRUE MOLARS. 
121 
central dilatation, like as in E. a?itiquus, but not to the extent at all likely to lead to a 
doubt as to the species to which the molar belonged. 
Among the foreign molars in the British Museum is a fragment of a last lower molar 
from Siberia, in the Sloane Collection. It is noteworthy for the thick enamel and cement 
in an Arctic specimen, there being eight ridges in 4| inches. 
A good instance of the deformities to which ultimate molars of Elephants are subject 
is represented by a remarkable abnormality in a molar in the British Museum, from 
Eschsciioltz Bay, the plates being rolled up like a “ roly-poly ” pudding. 1 
In the Woodwardian Museum there is a very large ultimate upper molar containing 
about twenty-four ridges, with the hinder ones also doubled on the side of the heel, as in 
the foregoing specimen. This is the tooth referred to in Dr. Falconer’s ‘Palaeontological 
Memoirs,’ from some entry in a note-book, wherein he is stated to have written that the 
above-mentioned molar “ bears all the marks of having died in captivity in the service of 
man of the flint-knife period.” 2 This would, of course, imply that Falconer held a belief 
that the man of the Stone Age had probably reclaimed the Mammoth, but a subsequent 
explanation (pp. 281 and 285 of his paper “ On the food of Elephants ”) shows clearly that 
the deformity in question is ascribable to causes not necessarily dependent on captivity, as 
might be readily supposed. The tooth is otherwise typical of the Mammoth; its locality 
however, is unknown. I fail, therefore, to notice any further character which could in 
any way account for the above statement, which, after all, was merely the jottings-down 
of a memorandum book, and might have been judiciously omitted in transcribing his 
notes. 
A curious and interesting specimen of an excessively worn ultimate molar of the 
Mammoth was brought to my notice by Professor McKenny Hughes in the Woodwardian 
Museum. The ridges were nearly ground to their enamel reflections, the plates being 
nearly all converted into insular-shaped loops on the surface of dentine, whilst the fangs 
had become consolidated into a ridge running alone the base of the crown like the keel of 
a vessel. It is a lower tooth of the right side. It moreover serves well as an illustration 
of the state of knowledge of proboscidean anatomy one hundred and fifty-three years 
ago, as may be inferred from the following entry in ‘ A Catalogue of the Foreign Fossils 
in the Collection of J. Woodward, M.D.,’ part 2, n 23, July, 1725, London, in which 
the above is described, p. 40, “ as a very large grinder of some cetaceous fish, weighing 
. . . perfect, and entire; dug up in the Duchy of Wirtemberg.” 
Mr. Davies showed me a drawing of a lower last true molar, in the possession of 
Mr. Dawson, of Beccles, Suffolk, in which only three small rounded islands of enamel 
remain in a mass of dentine 7f X 2 inches in breadth. The height of the ivory base is 
1 The very fine specimen of the lower ultimate molar of the Asiatic Elephant, ‘ Brit. Fossil Mammals,’ 
fig. 90, shows a similar deformity, which is repeated in various teeth of recent and fossil species, such as 
those shown in pi. vii, fig. 6, and pi. ix, fig. 6, of DeBlainville’s 1 Osteographie.’ 
2 Yol. ii, p. 169. 
