ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS. 247 



which measured six feet six inches in length, and twelve 

 inches in greatest circumference, probably belonged to a 

 female Mammoth : Captain Martin describes its curvature 

 as being equal to a semicircle turning outwards on its 

 line of projection. This tusk was sent to a cutler at 

 Canterbury, by whom it was sawn into five sections, but 

 the interior was found to be fossilized and unfit for use : 

 it is now in Captain Martin's possession. The tusks 

 of the extinct Elephant which have thus reposed for 

 thousands of years in the bed of the ocean which washes 

 the shore of Britain, are not always so altered by 

 time and the action of surrounding influences as to be 

 unfit for the purposes to which recent ivory is applied. 

 Mr. Robert Fitch of Norwich possesses a segment of a 

 Mammoth's tusk, which was dredged up by some Yar- 

 mouth fishermen off Scarborough, and which was so 

 slightly altered in texture, that it was sawn up into as 

 many portions as there were men in the boat, and each 

 claimed his share of the valuable product. 



Of the tusks referable by their size to the female Mam- 

 moth which have been disinterred on dry land, I may 

 cite the following instances. A tusk in the Museum of 

 the Geological Society, from the lacustrine pleistocene bed 

 exposed to the action of the sea on the coast of Essex 

 at Walton, which measures five feet and a half in length ; 

 and another from the same locality, in the possession of 

 John Brown Esq., of Stanway, Essex, which measures 

 four feet in length. A tusk recently discovered near 

 Barnstaple, on a bed of gravel, beneath a stratum of blue 

 clay five feet deep, and one of yellow clay about six feet 

 deep, with several feet of coarse gravel and soil above. 

 This tusk was broken by the pickaxes of the men, but 

 must have been about six feet in length : it had the grain 



