ELEPHANT. 629 



two feet five inches in circumference at its thickest part : another 

 from Eschscholtz Bay, was nine feet two inches in length, and 

 two feet one and a half inches in circumference, and weighed one 

 hundred and sixty pounds. A Mammoth's tusk has been dredged 

 up off Dungeness which measured eleven feet in length. In several 

 of the instances of Mammoth's tusks from British strata, the ivory 

 has been so little altered as to be fit for the purposes of manufacture ; 

 and the tusks of the Mammoth, which are still better preserved 

 in the frozen drift of Siberia, have long been collected in great 

 numbers as articles of commerce.(l) 



Cuvier(2) states that the Elephant of Africa, at least in certain 

 localities, has large tusks in both sexes, and that the female of this 

 species, which lived seventeen years in the Menagerie of Louis XIV, 

 had larger tusks than those in any Indian Elephant, male or female, 

 of the same size which he had seen. The ivory of the tusks of 

 the African Elephant is most esteemed by the manufacturer for 

 its density and whiteness. 



The molar teeth of the Elephant are remarkable for their great 

 size, even in relation to the bulk of the animal, and for the extreme 

 complexity of their structure. The crown, of which a great propor- 

 tion is buried in the socket, and very Uttle more than the grinding 

 surface appears above the gum, is deeply divided into a number 

 of transverse perpendicular plates, consisting each of a body of 

 dentine, (PI. 146, figs. 6 k 7, d) coated by a layer of enamel (e), 

 and this by the less dense bone -like substance (c) which fills 

 the interspaces of the enamelled plates, and here more especially 

 merits the name of ' cement,' since it binds together the several 

 divisions of the crown, before they are fully formed and united by 

 the confluence of their bases into a common body of dentine. As 

 the growth of each plate begins at the summit, they remain detached 



(1) In the account of the Mammoth's bones and teeth of Siberia, published in the ' Philo- 

 sophical Transactions' for 1737, (No. 446), tusks are cited which weighed two hundred pounds 

 each, and " are used as ivory, to make combs, boxes, and such other things ; being but little 

 more brittle, and easily turning yellow by weather and heat." From that time to the present 

 there has been no intermission in the supply of ivory, furnished by the tusks of the extinct 

 Elephants of a former world. 



(2) Loc. cit., p. 55. 



