478 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



on; indeed, the very small ones trot along beneath their 

 mothers' bodies and so are out of harm's way.* 



THE SALE OF ELEPHANTS 



The great dealer in wild animals, Carl Hagenbeck, of 

 Stellingen, near Hamburg, Germany, estimates that since 

 the founding of his business he has sold more than 5,000 

 elephants, both of the African types and of the Asiatic ones.j 

 An interesting fact communicated by him is that, some- 

 where on the western battle front in France, a large Bur- 

 mese elephant, widely known in Germany as "Jenny," is 

 employed in connection with the military operations, pre- 

 sumably for traction. 



EXTINCT ELEPHANTS 



The tallest of the extinct elephants appears to have been 

 straight-tusked Elephas antiquus of Europe, its height being 

 estimated by Pohlig and Pilgrim at from 15 ft. to 16 ft., 

 while the height of the tallest specimen of the North Amer- 

 ican Elephas imperator is a trifle over 13 ft. 6 in., and the 

 southern European Elephas meridionalis of the Paris Mu- 

 seum d'Histoire Naturelle is only 12 ft. 6| in. in height. 

 Elephas columhi of North America seems to have been con- 

 siderably shorter, its height ranging from 9 ft. to 11 ft., the 

 latter measurement being three or four inches less than that 

 of the tallest examples of the living African species. As to 

 the mounted museum specimens. Prof. Henry Fairfield Os- 

 born calls attention to the fact that, in most cases, the 

 tips of the dorsal spines have been unduly raised above the 

 superior spine of the scapula, leading to an exaggerated 

 estimate of the true height of the elephant. J 



*H. Warington Smith, "Five Years in Siam," London, 1894, pp. 58, 59. 



fPersonal communication from Carl Hagenbeck, November 1, 1915. 



t Henry Fairfield Osborn, "Review of the Pleistocene of Europe, Asia, and Northern 

 Africa"; Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. XXVI, pp. 215-315, 1915. 

 See pp. 262, 263. 



