924 



TEETH. 



impressed upon it by the form of the socket, 

 and gradually widening from the projecting 

 apex to that part which was formed when the 

 matrix and the socket had reached their full 

 size. 



" These incisive teeth of the elephant not 

 only surpass other teeth in size, as belonging 

 to a quadruped so enormous, but they are the 

 largest of all teeth in proportion to the size 

 of the body; representing in a natural state 

 those monstrous incisors of the Rodents, 

 which are the result of accidental suppression 

 of the wearing force of the opposite teeth." 



The tusks of the elephant, like those of 

 the Mastodon, consist chiefly of that modifi- 

 cation of dentine which is called " ivory," and 

 which shows, on transverse fractures or sec- 

 tions, strias proceeding in the arc of a circle 

 from the centre to the circumference, in op- 

 posite directions, and forming by their decus- 

 sations curvilinear lozenges. This character 

 is peculiar to the Proboscidian Pachyderms. 



In the Indian elephant the tusks are 

 always short and straight in the female, and 

 less deeply implanted than in the male : she 

 thus retaining, as usual, more of the charac- 

 ters of the immature state. In the male they 

 have been known to acquire a length of nine 

 feet, with a basal diameter of eight inches, 

 nnd to weigh one hundred and fifty pounds ; 

 hut these dimensions are rare in the Asiatic 

 species. 



Mr. Corse, speaking of the variety of 

 Indian elephant, called "Dauntelah" from its 

 large tusks, which project almost horizontally 

 with a slight curve upwards and outwards, 

 says, " The largest I have known in Bengal did 

 not exceed seventy-two pounds avoirdupois ; 

 at Tiperah they seldom exceed fifty pounds." 

 There are varieties of the Dauntelah in which 

 /he large tusks of the male are nearly or quite 

 straight ; and in a more marked breed called 

 " Mooknah," the tusks are much smaller, are 

 straight, and point directly downwards. These 

 ascertained varieties in an existing species 

 ought to weitrh with the observers of analo- 







gous varieties in the teeth of fossil Probos- 

 cidians, before they pronounce definitely on 

 their value as characters of distinct species. 

 More anomalous varieties occasionally pre- 

 sent themselves in the Indian Elephant, as 

 when one tusk is horizontal, the other ver- 

 tical; or when, from some distortion of the 

 alveolus, a spiral direction is impressed upon 

 the growth of the tusk, as in that specimen 

 figured by Grew in the " Rarities of Gresham 

 College," Tab. 4., and which is now in the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, 

 London. The tusk of the elephant is slightly 

 moveable in its socket, and readily receives a 

 new direction of growth from habitual pres- 

 sure ; this often causes distorted tusks in 

 captive elephants, and Cuvier * relates the 

 mode in which advantage was taken of the 

 .same impressibility, in order to rectify the 

 growth of such tusks in an elephant kept at 

 the Garden of Plants. 



The tusks of the extinct Elcphns jtriml- 

 * Ossemens Fossiles, 4to. 1821, torn. i. p. 47. 



genius, or Mammoth, have a bolder and more 

 extensive curvature than those of the Elt-phns 

 indicus: some have been found which describe 

 a circle ; but, the curve being oblique, they 

 thus clear the head, and point outwards, 

 downwards, and backwards. The numerous 

 fossil tusks of the Mammoth which have been 

 discovered and recorded, may be ranged 

 under two averages of size: the larger ones at 

 nine feet and a half, the smaller at five feet 

 and a half in length. 1 have elsewhere * as- 

 signed reasons for the probability of the latter 

 belonging to the female Mammoth, which 

 must accordingly have differed from the exist- 

 ing elephant of India, and more resembles 

 that of Africa in the development of her 

 tusks ; yet manifesting an intermediate cha- 

 racter by their smaller size. Of the tusks 

 which are referable to the male Mammoth, 

 one from the newer tertiary deposits in Essex, 

 measured nine feet ten inches along the outer 

 curve, and two feet five inches in circum- 

 ference at its thickest part ; another from 

 Eschscholtz Bay was nine feet two inches in 

 length, and two feet one and a half inches in 

 circumference, and weighed one hundred and 

 sixty pounds. A Mammoth's tusk has been 

 dredged up off Dungeness which measured 

 eleven feet in length. In several of the in- 

 stances of Mammoth's tusks from British 

 strata, the ivory has been .so little altered as 

 to be fit for the purposes of manufacture ; and 

 the tusks of the Mammoth, which are still 

 better preserved in the frozen drift of Siberia, 

 have long been collected in great numbers as 

 articles of commerce.-j- 



Cuvier J states that the elephant of Africa, 

 at least in certain localities, has large tusks 

 in both sexes, and that the female of this 

 species, which lived seventeen years in the 

 menagerie of Louis XIV., had larger tusks 

 than those in any Indian elephant, male or 

 female, of the same size which he had seen. 

 The ivory of the tusks of the African ele- 

 phant is most esteemed by the manufacturer 

 for its density and whiteness. 



The molar teeth of the elephant are re- 

 markable for their great size, even in relation 

 to the bulk of the animal, and for the extreme 

 complexity of their structure. The crown, 

 of which a great proportion is buried in the 

 socket, and very little more than the grinding 

 surface appears above the gum, is deeply di- 

 vided into a number of transverse perpen- 

 dicular plates {fig. 557), consisting each of a 

 body of dentine (d), coated by a layer of enamel 

 (e), and this again by the less dense bone-like 



* History of British Fossil Mammalia, 8vo. 1844, 

 p. 244. 



f In the account of the Mammoth's bones and 

 teeth of Siberia, published in the " Philosophical 

 Transactions " for 1737 (No. 446), tusks are cited 

 which weighed two hundred pounds each, and " are 

 used as ivory, to make combs, boxes, and such 

 other things; being but little more brittle, and 

 easily turning yellow by weather and heat." From 

 that time to the present there has been no inter- 

 mission in the supply of ivory, furnished by the 

 tusks of the extinct elephants of a former world. 



J Loc. cit., p. 55. 



