that of Edwards †, the head of which is too round, because it is taken from a young subject, to which it was necesssary to add tusks, are all Indian elephants.

The two figures in Buffon ‡, copied by Schreber §, and by Alessandri ||, are the two sexes of the Indian species.

Mayer gives a tolerable figure of a male dauntelah, (vorstell. allerh. thiere, i. pl. lxix. ;) but the skeleton (ib. lxx.) is copied from Blair, without any correction.

The elephant foetus preserved in the East India Company's house at Amsterdam, and represented by Seba, (tome i. pl. cxi.) is also of the Indian species.

The limits between the Indian and African species was already distinctly enough traced with respect to the various parts of the head, and without having occasion to resort to the other characters, which we shall point out by and bye, and which are supplied by the number of the nails, and the forms of various bones of the limbs; but before being able to apply with certainty the osteological characters of the cranium to the fossil elephant, we must determine what are the variable parts of one individual from the other, in one and the same species. I have therefore subjected my Indian crania to a comparison with each other, and I did the same with my African ones.

The latter presented me with scarce any appreciable dif- . ference.

As to the former, I found some with respect to the occiput and the alveoli of the tusks.

The occiput is more swelled in every direction in the former than in the latter, without regard to the length of the tusks.

The alveoli of the tusks of the dauntelah are a little more oblique in front; those of the mookna are a little straighter towards the bottom.

The latter are a little smaller, but by no means so much so in the proportion of the tusks themselves. What is

* Ambass. Orient. Descr. Gen. de la Chine, p. 94. Hist. Nat. xi. Pl. i. et Suppl.

§ Quad. i. tab. 78.

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+ Av. 221, f. 1. Quad. i. Pl. ii.

deficient

deficient in the size of the tusks is compensated by a greater thickness in the osseous substance of the alveolus. The reason is, that the alveolus, serving as a base and a socket for the muscles of the proboscis, could not shrink as well as the tusks, without the proboscis losing the strength and thickness which is necessary for it.

Lastly, There is a little variety in the length of the alveoli; and, what is very remarkable, even without any reference with that of the tusks. Our large mookna skeleton has them longer than our two dauntelahs, although its tusks are the smallest of all. To conclude, this increase in length does not exceed an inch.

It could not be considerable without the organisation of the proboscis being essentially changed, because the muscles of its lower part are inserted under the lower edge of the alveoli of the tusks, and those in the upper part are in the front, above the bones of the nose. The base of the proboscis has therefore necessarily for its vertical diameter the distance between these two points; and if the alveoli are prolonged beyond a certain measure, the proboscis would assume a monstrous size.

It is very important to notice this article, because it furnishes the most distinctive character of the fossil elephant.

If we compare together the small number of figures of elephants' skulls found in the works of naturalists, I do not think any stronger differences will be found than those I have mentioned.

The table annexed to the succeeding article expresses these differences by numbers.

A celebrated author has supposed a difference between the crania of males and females, which we have not mentioned, but he has been deceived by simple external appearances.

Our small mookna from Ceylon had, at the root of the proboscis, a very perceptible protuberance, which the female had not. M. Faujas, imagining that this protuberance belonged to the osseous parts, has represented these two heads in Pl. xii. of his Essais de Geologie. "In order to avoid," he says, p. 238, "falling into an error, when we

find the heads of a male and female fossil elephant, we must not mistake them for two different species."

Dissection has shown us, however, that this protuberance was only produced by two cartilages peculiar to elephants, which cover the entrance of the canals of the proboscis into the osseous nostrils.

These cartilages were a little more swelled in this individual than in the others.

It is not even a character common to all males. The dauntelah of Bengal had it not.

The same learned geologist has given to his figures much larger tusks than these two individuals had in reality, "In order," he says, p. 269, "to make those understand, who never saw an elephant, the manner in which these animals carry their tusks." It was not necessary, however, to give large tusks to the female, which never has any in the Indian species.

Article VIII.

Examination of the Cranium of the fossil Elephant.

The cranium was very cellular; the osseous laminæ composing it were too thin to be preserved in the fossil state: they are therefore found in innumerable fragments; buț three only are mentioned as being in a state of good preservation, and the most entire of the whole wants a part of the occiput.

They belong to the Petersburgh Academy *; the best was found upon the banks of the river Indigirska, in the most eastern and coldest part of Siberia, by the learned and intrepid Messerschmidt of Dantzick, who gave a drawing of it to his countryman Breynius. The latter had it engraved at the end of a memoir he inserted in the Philosophical Transactions †, and to this day it is the only public document we have upon this part of the skeleton of the fossil elephant.

I have copied the figure of Breynius in Pl. ii. fig. 1, ́bẹsides the African and Indian crania; and I have reduced the three to the same size nearly, in order to facilitate their + Vol, xl. n. 446, pl. i. and ii. comparison.

* Pallas, Nov. Com. Petrop. xiii.

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comparison. The first glance shows that the fossil elephant resembles, in its cranium as well as in its teeth, the Indian species rather than any other.

Unfortunately the drawing is not correct enough for an exact comparison, and it is not made upon a well-determined projection. The part of the alveoli, that of the condylon for the lower jaw, and the anterior edge of the temporal hollow, and of the orbit, are seen a little obliquely behind, while the occiput and the grinders are in a rigorous profile.

We see distinctly enough, however, a striking difference in proportion in the extreme length of the alveoli of the tusks. It is treble what it would be in an Indian or African cranium of the same dimensions; and the triturating surface of the grinders prolonged, in place of meeting the alveolary edge, would intersect the tube of the alveolus at one-third of its length.

This difference is so much the more important as it agrees with the form of the lower jaw, as we see below; and, as we have already said, it would of necessity produce another conformation in the proboscis of the fossil elephant; for where the sockets of the muscles of the proboscis were the same, i. e. the upper part of the nose and the lower edge of the alveoli of the tusks; in this case the base of that organ was three times larger in proportion than in our living elephants; or rather the sockets of the muscles were different, and à fortiori its total structure was different.

If we could trust entirely to drawings, we should also find, 1st, That the zygomatic arcade is differently figured; 2d, That the post-orbitary apophysis of the frontal bone is longer, more pointed, and more crooked; 3d, That the tubercle of the lacrymal bone is much larger and more salient.

As to the absolute size of the fossil cranium, compared with our living crania, we may form an idea of it from Plate iv. fig. 9, 10, 11, where I have represented the three crania in front, and upon the same scale.

We may form a still more correct idea of their size from the following table, in which I have collected the dimensions of all the crania with which I am acquainted.

Table