206 KELIQFI^: AQTJITAJSTIC^:. 



XIX. 



ON A PIECE OF ELEPHANT'S TUSK ENGKAVED WITH THE OUTLINE OF A MAMMOTH, 

 FEOM LA MADELAINE, DEP. DORDOGNE. By the late M. E. LAHTET. 



[From the ' Comptes Rendus des Seances de 1' Academic des Sciences,' vol. Ixi. (Seance du 21 Aout, 1865), 



pp. 309-311.] 



(See B. Plate XXVIII.) 



ON August 21, 1865, M. Milne-Edwards communicated to the Academy the fol- 

 lowing letter by M. Lartet relative to a slah of fossil ivory, found in an ossiferous 

 deposit in Pe"rigord, and marked with incisions apparently representing a long- 

 haired Elephant. 



" Since you think good to give publicity to the palaeontological specimen which 

 was shown you, and on which some have found the contours and other linear 

 details of an animal form referable to an Elephant, I will hand over to you, 

 before leaving, a cast of that fragment, prepared by M. Stahl, the able artist 

 attached to the Museum of Natural History ; and the original, after my return to 

 Paris, will be at the disposal of those who desire to make a more direct examina- 

 tion. The history of the specimen, found more than fifteen months ago, is this : 



" In May 1864 M. de Verneuil and our deceased friend Dr. Falconer having 

 shown a desire to visit the caverns and other localities of the Dordogne which I 

 had explored in company with my much regretted fellow-labourer the late Mr. H. 

 Christy, I accompanied them in that excursion. We were at that time still exca- 

 vating at the Madelaine, which had already furnished a number of those animal 

 figures carved on bone or on reindeer-antler, which were submitted last year to 

 the inspection of the Academy. 



"On our arrival the workmen had just discovered five broken pieces of a 

 rather thin plate or slab of ivory, once forming part of a moderate-sized tusk of 

 an Elephant. Having joined the pieces together, according to lines of junction 

 marked out by the minute intricacies of fracture, I showed Dr. Falconer the 

 numerous characteristic, though shallow, engraved lines, which seemed to me to 

 indicate some animal forms. The practised eye of the celebrated palaeontologist, 

 who has so well studied the Proboscidians, at once recognized the head of an 

 Elephant ; and he soon pointed out other parts of the body, and particularly, in 

 the region of the neck, a bundle of descending lines, which recall the long shaggy 



