HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 115 



Next to the trunk the most remarkable external character 

 of the elephant is the tusks. These occupy the place of 

 the ordinary canine teeth of animals, or rather perhaps 

 that of the two great incisive teeth in the upper jaw, which 

 belong to several of the rodent or gnawing animals, and to 

 some of which the real teeth of the elephant bear a con- 

 siderable resemblance, at least in the substances of which 

 they are composed. The teeth, or rather tusks of the ele- 

 phant are not inserted by simple roots into the jaw or nasal 

 bones, they are for a considerable part of their length to- 

 wards the root hollow, and inserted in a conical core, which 

 perhaps gives them a firmer footing than if they were 

 placed in sockets. These teeth form the well known sub- 

 stance, the ivory of commerce, and they often attain a very 

 large size in the old males, the quantity of ivory in a sin- 

 gle pair being sometimes at least one hundred and fifty 

 pounds weight. 



In the living elephants of both varieties, the tusks are 

 either nearly straight, or curved upwards, or if their direc- 

 tion be nearly that of the line of the face they are inclined 

 forward at the points. In the fossil elephant, on the other 

 hand (at least in all the specimens which have been found) 

 the curvature of the tusks is the other way, or downwards. 

 What may be the use of this difference of structure is not 

 easy to say, because we know nothing of the habits of the 

 extinct elephant, and very little of what the state of the 

 country may have been when it was alive ; but, as the 

 tusks in it are so constructed as that they might act as 

 hooks in pulling down substances higher than itself, and as 

 it is probable that the northern marshes were at that time 

 covered with tree ferns, and those other palm-like plants, 

 of which the remains are abundant in the fossil state, 

 though not a vestige of the same plants now appears on the 

 surface of the same regions, we may, perhaps, venture to con- 

 clude that those tusks had been employed in pulling down 



