FALCONER MASTODOK AXD ELEPHANT. 291 



In the majority of cases they diverge, and are produced for^wards and 

 upwards in an easy curve, with the points directed outwards, very 

 much as in the African Elephant or in the skeleton of Mastodon 

 Ohioticus in the British Museum, figured by Owen *. They never 

 present the pronounced arc, sometimes amounting to three-fourths 

 of a circle, which is seen in large tusks of the Mammoth, nor the 

 double or spiral curve so characteristic of the latter species. When 

 attached to the craniiim, they are often found in the matrix, lying 

 flat, and curved horizontally outwards like a sickle, in the The- 

 ristocaulodo7i-fash.ion so grotesquely represented by Koch in his 

 fanciful restorations of the North American Mastodon. This I be- 

 lieve to be an accident f? after the decomposition of the soft parts, 

 from torsion of the tusks within their alveoli, in consequence of the 

 excessive weight of the extruded portions. It occurs only in the 

 largest specimens, and .the tusks have been restored in this position 

 in some of the crania in the Florentine Miiseum. In one enormous 

 skull, a late acquisition, there is but a single tusk, on the right side. 

 On the left, the alveolus is in a great measure filled up, but not 

 withered, which would indicate that the left tusk had been lost 

 late in life. The borders of the incisive sheaths, in this case, di- 

 verge widely apart and suddenly. In the Indian Elephant, the 

 tusks are sometimes broken with prodigious violence in combats be- 

 tween savage males, and the fracture may take place either within 

 or outside the alveolar sheaths. My colleague. Sir Proby Cautley, has 

 witnessed an accident of the kind in an Elephant-fight at Kotah, in 

 Central India. 



The tusks attain an enormous size, commensurate with the 

 colossal stature and bulk of this species. In a huge male cranium, 

 having the zygomatic arches entire, they measure outside the inci- 

 . sive sheaths 24 inches in girth. A detached fragment of another tusk 

 measures about 25| inches ; the section is nearly circular. A 

 polished frustum of another yields upwards of 27 inches in girth, 

 being an average diameter of 9 inches. The section varies between 

 round and elliptical. In a finely preserved cranium, in which 

 the tusks are entire, they measure 6 feet 9 inches, including the 

 alveolar portion, with a diameter of 5 inches. Cuvier gives the di- 

 mensions of only a single Tuscan tusk, namely, 6 feet 8 inches long. 

 A specimen of fossil tusk from Eome, presented to the Paris Gallery 

 by the Due de la Rochefoucault and M. Desmarets, measures fully 

 28 inches in girth {vide Cuv. Oss. Foss. tom. i. p. 173). It is pro- 

 bably of E. meridionalis. 



In varieties of one of the living species, the tusks are known to 

 vary so considerably in their contour and in direction that no ab- 

 solute distinctive characters can safely be founded upon them. AU 

 that can belaid of the Yal d'Arno specimens is, that they are in- 

 variably without the double or spiral curvature and circular arc, 

 with recurved points, which are so generally observable in the tusks 



* British Fossil Mammalia, p. 298, fig. 102. 



t See the frontispiece to Warren's ' Mastodon giganicus,' Boston, 1852, 

 and p. 88. 



