stumpy appendage). "Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not" is surely much more suggestive of the copious draughts of an Elephant than the possibly equally copious but not so visible libations of a Hippopotamus.
The most ancient of the true Elephants (genus Elephas) is E. meridionalis. It is of the African type, i.e. the plates of the molar teeth are not abundant, and are not so many as in the existing E. africanus. It seems to have been one of the largest of Elephants, standing 4 metres high. Its remains are abundant in Europe, and are known also from England. Like this species E. antiquus is also of the African type. It was contemporary with man. Certain dwarf or "pony" races found in caves in Malta, and called Elephas melitensis or E. falconeri, are believed to belong to this species. Mr. Leith Adams, who described these[1] remains, placed them in two dwarf species called by the names used above, and found associated with them a larger form, which he referred to E. antiquus. The existence of these animals in Malta seems to argue at least its former larger dimensions, and the presence of more abundant fresh water. The remarkable swimming capabilities of the Elephant do not necessarily imply either a former absence of land connexion or, on the other hand, its existence. Nor as a third possibility can it be suggested that the dwarf size argues an island of limited dimensions, when we bear in mind the huge tortoises of the Galapagos and some other islands. It is important to notice that Elephants of the African type (Loxodon) were not formerly absent from India. E. planifrons was one of these.
The genus Stegodon is so called from the fact that the molar teeth, seen in longitudinal section, present a series of roof-shaped folds, the interstices between which are not, or are, imperfectly filled up with the cement which in Elephas reduces the surface of the teeth to a level plane. This genus is exclusively Asiatic, and is Miocene to Pleistocene in time range. The number of ridges on the molars is small, not more than two. The incisors (tusks) have no enamel; the skeleton generally is like that of Elephas, between which and Mastodon the present genus is intermediate. Among the four or five species is S. ganesa (called after the Indian Elephant-headed divinity), with tusks 10 feet long, to be seen at the British Museum of Natural History.
- ↑ Trans. Zool. Soc. ix. 1874, p. 1.
