A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex. 55 



rapidly to vanish as soon as exposed to the Kght. The 

 bones, which have laid here for untold years, have lost 

 their osseous character ; they are full of water, and ready 

 to run into a shapeless mass so soon as their matrix is 

 disturbed. How shall they be saved ? was a question 

 asked years ago, when the first of these elephant tusks was 

 discovered. It is written in the archives of the time 

 that — 



Doctor Falconer to liis aid then called Professor Busk in, 

 And, lo ! a mass amorphous they found this precious tusk in ! 



Another Professor (Mr. W. Davies, of the British Museum) 

 soon solved the difficulty ; and now, as soon as the 

 skeleton is exposed, a skilful practitioner is ready with a 

 bucket of liquid size. With this preparation the uncovered 

 bones are speedily coated. Evaporation is arrested, and 

 the fossil is temporarily hardened in view of a more per- 

 manent dressing. But the more hazardous work sometimes 

 comes after this investment with size (or, perhaps, plaster 

 of Paris). Suppose the fossil ^n question to be the weighty 

 collar-bone or cranium of the mammoth — the British hairy 

 elephant ! The mass to be removed, including a quantity 

 of the surrounding earth, will amount to half-a-ton, or 

 perhaps 12 cwt. How shall it be raised from its bed, full 

 twenty feet down in the earth, and conveyed entire two 

 miles to the museum which Sir Antonio Brady has pro- 

 vided ? Here is the solution. A lofty pair of ship's shears 

 is rigged over the spot, ropes and pulleys are soon forth- 

 coming, and a gang of labourers are speedily working with 

 a will to lift some member, joint, or limb of the embedded 

 elephant out of his grave. 



We may form some idea from these few facts of the 

 expense so voluntarily assumed by Sir Antonio, as public 

 and honorary trustee of treasures which, without his eilorts, 

 would but too likely be lost to the nation for ever. The 

 wages of a gang of labourers who have been " knocked off " 

 the job of digging brick-earth on the spot where the bones 

 have been found, and who are kept waiting for perhaps 

 three days until the prize is ready for removal, are in 



