736 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



York. Jumbo, however, was a member of another race, 

 oxyotis; his ears, being without the inward fold on the upper 

 margin, met one another and overlapped on the nape. 

 The largest elephant skull examined by us in a series of 

 some fifty in the museums of America and Europe is a 

 specimen at the American Museum of Natural History of 

 New York, collected by Akeley in the Budonga forest of 

 Uganda. This skull is that of a bull just arrived at adult 

 size, but not an old animal, and measures in basal length 

 from the condyles to the tip of the premaxillary bones 40 

 inches, and in greatest breadth 36 inches, in which latter 

 dimension it exceeds the next largest by 2 inches. The 

 tusks of this skull weighed loi and 102 pounds, and are 

 far from record size. In order to ascertain the maximum 

 size to which an elephant's skull may attain it is desirable 

 to have the dimensions of the skulls from which record 

 tusks have been obtained. In this connection the girth of 

 the tusk is the important consideration, for both the weight 

 and length affect the size of the skull less, as they vary 

 without regard to the size of the skull. There are at present 

 no skulls preserved in any museum to our knowledge from 

 which record tusks have come. This is really unfortunate, 

 for it is very doubtful if any elephants bearing really record 

 tusks are still alive, owing to the slaughter to which large- 

 tusked bulls have been subject in every part of Africa. 

 The tusk record for both weight and circumference is that 

 of an East African tusk now in the possession of Sir E. G. 

 Loder, having a weight of 235 pounds and a circumference 

 of 26 inches. This is really a very unusual tusk, being three 

 times the weight of an average or normal one. Major 

 Powell-Cotton, however, has a tusk from the upper Nile 

 almost equalling this one in circumference, being but i inch 

 less in this dimension. The largest tusk in the British 

 Museum, which has a girth but little less, is 24^^ inches in 

 circumference, and has a weight of 226^2 pounds, standing 

 second to the record in this latter respect. The longest 

 tusk is one of 11 feet 5 inches in length, also from East 

 Africa and now in the National Collection of Heads and 

 Horns of New York. The average tusk weight in old bulls 

 to-day is not more than 40 pounds, but under normal con- 

 ditions before the large bulls were shot for their ivory the 



