Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/588

 of a longitudinal line bisecting the tooth into an outer and an inner division*, and from the ridges " being a little convex in front and concave behind, determining a similar form to the valley between them"†, that the milk-tooth with sinuously disposed ridges and valleys cannot belong to that species.

I note, however, in the upper molars of the Elephas (Stegodon) bombifrons, Fr., a tendency to sinuosity in the transverse course of the ridges, and an indication of a median constriction in some of them, which comes nearer to the character of the Chinese tooth. Unfortunately the homologue of that tooth has not been obtained of the E. bombifrons. It is very significant of the tact of discerning differential characters so happily possessed by our late distinguished fellow labourer, that in the figures (5 and 6) which he has given of two fragments of large upper molars with the above characters somewhat more marked, in plate 29 A of the ' Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis,' illustrative of his Elephas bombifrons, he should have appended to his ascription of those fragments to that species a note of interrogation, and should have added in the posthumous account given in the ' Palaeontological Memoirs' the following expression of mature and probably final opinion : — " Doubtful what figures 5 and 6 are" (vol. i. p. 460).

Now, after a close comparison of my Chinese deciduous molar with every specimen in the British Museum likely to elucidate its specific character (and most have been beautifully figured, though, unfortunately, with much reduction of size, in the master-work above quoted, ' Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis'), and with specimens and figures of specimens in other collections, there is none more likely to belong to the same species of Elephas or Mastodon or Stegodon than the fragment of upper molar from the Siwalik tertiaries, of the specific nature of which Falconer was doubtful. I conclude, therefore, that the best service to science will be to record the characters, with figures of the natural size, of the second upper grinder, d 3, right side, of the proboscidian from Shanghai, as of a Stegodon sinensis, to which, with probability, though not with certainty, the fragments of the large Stegodon, of a species to Falconer unknown, from the Siwalik tertiaries may also belong.

Howsoever this may prove, it is acceptable to find the results of comparisons converging and concurring in approximating the Chinese Proboscidian most nearly to those extinct forms which have laid their bones and teeth in localities geographically nearest to the grave of the Stegodon sinensis.

I have not deemed it expedient to slice a unique tooth for microscopical scrutiny ; but there is no more appearance of cement in the coronal interspaces of the present Chinese fossil molar than in those of the more Mastodontal forms of Proboscidia. This, however, would not exclude the Mastodon sinensis from the section of Pro-


 * Falconer, ' Palaeontological Memoirs,' vol. i. p. 113.

† Ibid. p. 114. Both these characters are well shown in the upper (first true) molar of Cliffs Mastodon elephantoides = Stegodon Cliftii, Fr., loc. cit. pl. 39. fig. 6.