ELEPHANT TUSKS 389 



sovka, evidently a young animal, one of the tusks was, as 

 we have noted, attached to the skull at the time the remains 

 were discovered, but it was hacked out by one of the natives 

 not long afterward. However, by careful readjustment, 

 guided by the marks left on skull and tusk bj^ the hatchet 

 used in cutting the latter out, some interesting indications 

 as to the progressive growth and change of direction in the 

 mammoth tusks were secured, and Doctor Pfizenmayer has 

 come to the conviction that in the full-grown animals the 

 direction of curve was not upward nor outward, nor defi- 

 nitely inward, but after first describing a short inward curve 

 the further growth developed a downward curve. In a 

 young mammoth, such as that found on the Beresovka, 

 this final curve is not yet apparent at the lower end of the 

 tusk bending inward. The abraded surfaces to be noted 

 on many mammoth tusks have been explained as due to 

 their use by these animals in digging up their food, grasses, 

 plants, shrubs, etc., out of the snow or ice which covered 

 it during a considerable part of the year in this far northern 

 land. 



The downward curve, a prolongation of an inward curve, 

 is most characteristically shown in a mammoth tusk of the 

 Petrograd Zoological Museum. This tusk, which is a left 

 one, measures but 98 cm. (3 ft. 2J in.) on a straight line and 

 yet has a length of 1.59 m. (5 ft. ^J in.) if measured along 

 the curve. It has the peculiar spiral curvature to a very 

 marked extent. This is also observable in a most interesting 

 mammoth cranium, with left tusk attached, now in the 

 museum of Cracow University and found in 1851 at Bzianka, 

 near Rzeszov, in West Galicia under the loess. Here the 

 tusk, while measuring almost exactly two meters (6 ft. 6j 

 in.) along its curve, has a direct length of only 1.57 cm. 

 (about 5 ft. If in.); the circumference at the upper end is 

 30 cm. (llf in.). The spiral twisting of this tusk, although 



