EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 343 



tionally rich in this respect. A mammoth tusk found here 

 in 1605 is suspended in the choir of the Michaehskirche at 

 Hall; this is the earliest Suabian find certainly known, 

 although Cuvier had heard or read of a tusk found in 1494. 

 By far the most important of these discoveries was that of 

 the nearly complete skeleton of a mammoth found August 

 6, 1910, in the rubble of Steinheim-on-the-Murr, of middle 

 Pleistocene age. A careful study of the position of the 

 separate parts of the skeleton led to the conclusion that the 

 mammoth had not died on the spot, but that its dead body 

 had been borne down by the river, and had stranded on a 

 gravel bank, where it was gradually buried beneath the 

 sand deposits. The bones were yellowish in colour and had 

 lost nothing of their form; the tusks were also quite per- 

 fect as to form, but in structure they had suffered more than 

 many others from the deposits of this region. The chief 

 dimensions of the mammoth are given as follows : 



Height to top of scapula 12 ft. 1 in. 



Length from tip of tusk to first caudal vertebra . . . 16 ft. 7 in. 

 Length to end of tail ' 17 ft. 3 in. 



Doctor Dietrich of Berlin has bestowed the name 

 Elephas primigenius Fraasi, Dietr., upon this species of 

 mammoth as characteristic of the Wiirttemberg type, and 

 in honour of palaeontologist Prof. Dr. E. Fraas of Stuttgart, 

 who died in 1915.* 



The curious superstition that illness would befall any one 

 who unearthed the complete body of a dead mammoth is 

 prevalent among the Lamuts of northeastern Siberia, al- 

 though they do not hesitate to take off and utilize the tusks 

 wherever these may be found. This probably goes to prove 

 the rarity of such remains in a relatively perfect state and it 



*0. W. Dietrich, "Elephas primigenius Fraasi, eine schwabische Mammutrasse," 

 Stuttgart, 1912. 



