122 ELEPHANTS 



Indian elephant, but having a bow-like outward curvature 

 of the tusks, their points finally directed towards one 

 another, and a thick growth of coarse hair all over the 

 body. This is " the mammoth," the remains of which 

 are found in every river valley in England, France and 

 Germany, and of which whole carcases are frequently dis- 

 covered in Northern Siberia, preserved from decay in the 

 frozen river gravels and " silt." The ancient cave-men of 

 France used the fresh tusks of the mammoth killed on the 

 spot for their carvings and engravings, and from their time 

 to this the ivory of the mammoth has been, and remains, 

 in constant use. It is estimated that during the last two 

 centuries at least I oo pairs of mammoths' tusks have been 

 each year exported from the frozen lands of Siberia. In 

 early mediaeval times the trade existed, and some ivory 

 carvings and drinking horns of that age appear to be 

 fashioned from this more ancient ivory. 



Already, then, within the human period we find elephants 

 closely similar to those of our own time, far more numerous 

 and more widely distributed than in our own day, and 

 happily established all over the temperate regions of the 

 earth even in our Thames Valley and in the forests where 

 London now spreads its smoky brickwork. When we go 

 further back in time as the diggings and surveying of 

 modern man enable us to do we find other elephants of 

 many different species, some differing greatly from the three 

 species I have mentioned, and leading us back by gradual 

 steps to a comparatively small animal, about the size of a 

 donkey, without the wonderful trunk or the immense tusks 

 of the later elephants. By the discovery and study of these 

 earlier forms we have within the last ten years arrived at a 

 knowledge of the steps by which the elephant acquired in 

 the course of long ages (millions of years) his " proboscis " 

 (as the Greeks first called it), and I will later sketch that 

 history. 



