ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS.—CRANIUM. 
129 
is quite apparent also in the latter. 1 Evidently, as in the Asiatic, where a similar sinking 
exists, it varies considerably with age, and is deeper in some individuals than in others; 
and varies, no doubt, also in the sexes. E. ganesa and E. insignis show also slight depres¬ 
sions in the same situation. It is more pronounced in drawings of E. meridionalis ; 
whilst the beetling crown of E. Namadicus is quite unique; and the excessive sinking in the 
forehead, amounting to a cranial deformity in the skull, of E. Hysudricus , in the British 
Museum, as compared with the perfectly even surface of the part in the adolescent 
cranium of the same species by its side, suggest the probability that the former may 
have undergone compression some time after death. 3 
Again, the forehead is flat in the young of E. Africanus, becoming slightly convex in 
the adult and aged. E. planifrons and E. bombifrons appear to have also flat frontals. 
Breadth of forehead. —The breadth of the forehead at its narrowest part between the 
temporal ridges varies apparently in the insular and Continental varieties of the Asiatic 
Elephant, but the Mammoth agrees better in the character with the Asiatic than any 
other species. This part seems broadest in the short-headed Elephants, to wit, E. Africanus, 
and E. planifrons, gradually narrowing through the two preceding, and E. Hysudricus , 
and E. meridionalis to E. bombifrons , where the forehead is excessively narrow as compared 
with the crown and occiput. 
Nares. —-The outline and position of the narial aperture are similar in both the Asiatic 
Elephant and the Mammoth. It is generally reniform in shape, with the horns directed 
forwards; the latter character, however, does not seem invariable in the Mammoth, and 
is reversed in young crania of the recent species, whilst the configurations of the apices 
of the cornua are more circular in certain individuals than in others. But these characters 
are not confined to the above species, being more or less observable in E. Africanus, 
E. meridionalis, E. Namadicus, &c. The aperture, however, is placed at about the same 
relative distance from the vertex in the Mammoth and Asiatic Elephant, whilst it is 
nearer to the crown in the African E. meridionalis, E. Namadicus , and other brachy- 
cephalic species. It is a part, however, so liable to injury in the fossil skull that one 
rarely meets with it in a state of integrity. 
Incisive sheaths. — Dr. Falconer states that the incisive alveoli of the Mammoth 
form an angle with the frontal plane, thereby necessitating the truncation of the mandible 
at its symphysis. 3 This is somewhat apparent in the Brussels skull, and, although the 
1 This hollow is also evident in the Siberian skull shown in pi. xiv, fig. 2, and in the cranium of 
Adams’s skeleton, pi. xvii, of the ‘ Ossemens Fossiles.’ The skull etched on the fragment of ivory from the 
Cave of La Madelaine, in the Dordogne, is so truthful that, supposing we had never seen a Mammoth’s 
skull, there could be no difficulty whatever in at once differentiating the characters of the profile of the 
above from that of either of the recent species, at all events from the African Elephants. This essay of an 
artist belonging to the early stone age of Southern France is assuredly a most laudable performance. 
2 Compare pi. xlv, fig. 20 a, with fig. 20 b of the ‘ Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis.’ 
3 ‘Pal. Mem.,’ vol. ii, p. 121. The same is stated to obtain in the E. ganesa, famous for its 
enormous incisors. 
