24 AFRICAN ELEPHANT 



natives of the Egyptian Sudan. The right tusk is almost invariably 

 employed for this purpose, and is consequently termed by the Sudanis 

 the hadam, or slave. 



Remarkable abnormalities are occasionally exhibited by African 

 elephant - tusks. Examples of these are exhibited in the British 

 Museum, where two specimens are twisted into a corkscrew-like shape, 

 while a third is perfectly straight. 



In 1907 Colonel Sir Hayes Sadler, Commissioner of East Africa, 

 sent to the Museum from Mombasa a still more remarkable mal- 

 formed tusk. The tusk itself was evidently quite a small one, but has 

 been almost completely buried in a huge nodular mass of ivory, so 

 that the whole specimen may be compared to a huge yellow mangold- 

 wurzel in general appearance. Although only some 1 8 inches in length, 

 it weighs 17 lb., and would be much heavier were it not that much 

 of the interior is hollow. At each extremity are seen, portions of the 

 tusk itself; and it would seem probable that the larger end was the 

 one inserted in the jaw, the basal portion having apparently been 

 broken off, and the fractured surface polished by handling or otherwise. 

 That this extraordinary growth is the result of injury or disease is 

 perfectly evident ; but how the specimen could have grown to its 

 present size is a mystery, for its weight is so great in proportion to 

 the size of the shaft, or tusk proper, that it is difficult to understand 

 why it was not broken off long before it attained such huge dimensions. 

 Whether it was actually removed from a slain elephant or picked up 

 was not stated by the donor. 



At a meeting of the Zoological Society of London held on 

 November 14, 1905, the Hon. Walter Rothschild exhibited two tusks 

 obtained by Baron Maurice de Rothschild in Abyssinia, which were 

 then regarded as so unlike normal tusks of any known animal as to 

 suggest the possibility of their belonging to some unknown creature. 

 Of one of these tusks Mr. Rothschild subsequently presented a cast to 

 the British Museum. This cast indicates a highly curved and much 

 flattened tusk of about 2 feet in length, marked on the broad concave 

 surface by a number of bold longitudinal flutings. In 1907 Mr. 

 L. D. Gosling presented to the Museum three small tusks of female 

 elephants obtained during the Alexander- Gosling expedition from 

 Lake Tchad to the Congo, one of which presents a most striking 

 resemblance to the cast. It is, indeed, considerably smaller and less 

 sharply curved, but is of the same general contour, and likewise bears 

 distinct traces of longitudinal flutings on the flattened concave surface, 

 although these are less numerous than in the original specimen, and 



