628 UNGULATES. 



or quite straight ; and in a more marked breed called * Mooknah' 

 the tusks are much smaller, are straight, and point directly down- 

 wards. These ascertained varieties in an existing species ought 

 to weigh with the observers of analogous varieties in the teeth of 

 fossil Proboscidians, before they pronounce definitely on their value 

 as characters of distinct species. More anomalous varieties occa- 

 sionally present themselves in the Indian Elephant, as when one 

 tusk is horizontal, the other vertical; 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 English College of Surgeons. The tusk of the Elephant is 

 slightly moveable in its socket, and readily receives a new direction 

 of growth from habitual pressure : this often causes distorted tusks 

 in captive Elephants, and Cuvier(l) 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 Elephas primigenius, or Mammoth, 

 have a bolder and more extensive curvature than those of the 

 Elephas 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. I have elsewhere(2) 

 assigned reasons for the probabiUty of the latter belonging to the 

 female Mammoth, which must accordingly have difi'ered from the 

 existing Elephant of India, and more resembled that of Africa in 

 the development of her tusks ; yet manifesting an intermediate 

 character 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 



(1) ' Ossemens Fossiles,' 4to. 1821, torn, i, p. 47. 



(2) ' History of British Fossil Mammalia,' 8vo. 1844, p. 244. 



