108 On the Mammoth, or Fossil Elephant. 



varieties, differing in length and thickness. That remaining 

 fixed on the skin is of the colour of the camel, an inch and an 

 half long, very thick set, and curled in locks. It is interspersed 

 with a few bristles, about three inches long, of a dark reddish 

 colour. 



Among the separate parcels of hair are some rather redder 

 than the short hair just mentioned, about four inches long, 

 and some bristles nearly black, much thicker tlian horse-hair, 

 and from 12 to 18 inches long. 



The skin when first brought to the museum was offensive. 

 It is now quite dry and hard, and where most compact is half 

 an inch thick. Its colour is the dull black of the living ele- 

 phants. 



Art. VIII. On the Figure of the Earth. By M. de Laplace. 



The multiplied experiments made with the pendulum have 

 shewn that the increase of gravity follows a very regular pro- 

 gression, and that it is very nearly as the square of the sine of the 

 latitude. This force being the result of the attractions of all the 

 terrestrial molecules, observations of it, compared with the theory 

 of the attraction of spheroids, offer the only means which can 

 enable us to penetrate into the internal constitution of the earth. 

 The result is, that this planet is formed of strata, of which the 

 density increases from the surface to the centre, and which are 

 arranged regularly round that point. I have published, at the 

 end of the Connaissances des Teins for 1821, the following Theo- 

 rem, which I have demonstrated in the second volume of the 

 Nouveaux Memoires de VAcademie des Sciences. 



" If the length of the seconds pendulum at the equator be 

 taken as unity, and if to the length of this pendulum, observed 

 at any point on the surface of the terrestrial spheroid, be added, 

 half the height of this point above the level of the ocean, divided 

 by half the polar axis, 'a height which is given by barometrical 

 observation, the increase of this length, thus corrected, will be, 

 on the hypothesis of a constant density below a small depth, 



