ARTIODACTYLA 305 



has for years been in progress and still continues. Unfortunately for 

 the elephants, they possess large ivory tusks, which find a ready market 

 and appeal to the avarice of tusk hunters. In 1889 it was estimated that 

 100,000 elephants, "a procession 180 miles long," were killed each year 

 in order to supply the world with ivory. 6 In 1926 it was said that, not- 

 withstanding efforts to protect them by law, $250,000 worth of tusks 

 are still annually smuggled across the boundary from British Africa 

 to Italian Somaliland. 7 Occasionally even circus elephants "run amuck" 

 and kill people, as happened in one of the southern states in 1929, and 

 of course wild elephants are always dangerous. Many people are killed 

 by them in both Africa and Asia. Elephants killed four people in 

 India in i895. 8 Such tragedies are not uncommon where these huge 

 animals run wild. 



A great deal of ivory has been obtained from the tusks of fossil 

 mammoths extinct species of elephant. Such tusks are often found 

 in the United States, but are usually considerably weathered. In Alaska 

 they are frequently found in frozen soil and ice, which has preserved 

 them from weathering and kept them in good condition. They are 

 much more abundant in the frozen portions of Siberia. Digby says 

 he saw 1,000 pairs of mammoth tusks in a single year, and that 

 ancient Chinese writings show that mammoth ivory was brought into 

 China from Siberia centuries ago. 9 Very ancient carved ivory is found 

 in European caves, and the search for fossil ivory extends far back in 

 the past. Mammoths were obtained by the prehistoric peoples of 

 Europe by means of pitfalls and the ivory tusks were used by them. 

 The northern ivory trade of China has been traced back as far as 

 50 B.C. The estimates of the number of fossil mammoths discovered 

 in Siberia during the last 250 years vary from 20,000 to 62,ooo. 10 



ORDER ARTIODACTYLA EVEN-TOED, HOOFED MAMMALS 



This order includes, among others, several of the most important 

 families of domesticated mammals. 



' Lucas, Ann. Kept. U. S. Natl. Museum for 1889, p. 611. 



7 Carey, Journ. Mammalogy, vii, 83, 1926. Lang, Journ. Mammalogy, iv, 163, 

 1923. Phillips, Journ. Mammalogy, vi, 130-131, 1925. 



*F. C. K., Deaths from wild mammals and snakes in India, Amer. Naturalist, 

 xxxi, 77-78, 1897. 



9 Digby, The mammoth and mammoth hunting in northeast Siberia, pp. 21, 53, 

 1926. 



M Osborn, The romance of the woolly mammoth, Natural History, xxx, 227-239, 

 1930. 



