£48 Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. 



M. Humboldt indeed says, that he found near Santa Fc 

 an immense quantity of fossil elephant bones, as luM Afri^ 

 call as of the Ohio species; but a closer examination has 

 since shown, that all these bones were of a particular species 

 of mastodontu;-:. 



It seems therefore clear, that beyond comparison the 

 greatest number of fossil elephants' teeth have narrow lami- 

 nae, and that the small number of exceptions hitherto dis- 

 covered are neither verj' important nor well authenticated. 



Article VI. 

 Varieties in the Size and Cnrvatures of the Tmks of Ele^ 



phants — Comparison of fossil Tusks ivith those of living 

 Elephants. 



a. Tusks of the livina; Species. 



Let us now examine the varieties of tusks, and the diflcr- 

 ences remarked in this respect among elephants. 



Their texture exhibits no important differences. It al- 

 ways presents upon its transverse section those streaks 

 ubich proceed like an arc of a circle from the centre to the 

 circumference, and form, in growing, curvilinear lozenges 

 which occupy the whole disk, and which are more or 

 less broad, and more or less perceptible to the eye- This 

 character, common to all elephant ivory, .>ud depending im- 

 mediately upon the pores oi their pulp) nucleus, is not to 

 be found xn the tusks of any other animal. It is to be seen 

 in all fossil tusks, and it refutes the opinion of Leibnitz*, 

 adopted by some other writers, and even by Linnaeusf, that 

 the mammoth horqs might have belonged to the tricheais 

 rosmarus. The tusks of these animals, however, seciT^ 

 wholly composed of sntall round accumulated grains. 



The size of tusks varies according to the species, sexes, 

 and varieties j and as they are growing all their lives, age 

 more than any thing else influences their dimensions. 



The African elephant, as far as we are able to ascertain, 

 has very large tusks in both sexes. The African female^ 

 seventeen year? old, the skeleton of which is in our posses- 



* Protogaea, § xxxiv. p. 26, f Sy^t. Nat. ed. xii. p. 49. 



^ioHj 



