ELEPHAS. 393 



lozenges. This character is a valuable one in the determina- 

 tion of fragments of fossil tusks. 



The tusks of the extinct* Elephas priniigeiiius have a 

 bolder and more extensive curvature than those of the 

 Elephas i adieus ; some have been found which describe 

 a circle, but the curve being oblique, they thus clear the 

 head, and point outward, downward, and backward. The 

 numerous fossil tusks of the Mammoth which have been dis- 

 covered and recorded, may be ranged under two averages of 

 size — the larger ones at nine feet and a half, the smaller at 

 five feet and a half in length. The writer has elsewhere 

 assigned reasons for the probability of the latter belonging to 

 the female Mammoth, which must accordingly have differed 

 from the existing elephant of India, and have more resembled 

 that of Africa, in the development of her tusks, yet mani- 

 festing an intermediate character by their smaller size. Of 

 the tusks which are referable to the male M am moth, one from 

 the newer tertiary deposits in Essex measured nine feet ten 

 inches along the outer curve, and two feet five inches in cir- 

 cumference at its thickest part ; another from Eschscholtz 

 Bay was nine feet two inches in length, and two feet one and 

 a half inches in circumference, and weighed one hundred 

 and sixty pounds. A specimen, dredged up off Dungeness, 

 measured eleven feet in length. In several of the instances 

 of Mammoth's tusks from British strata, the ivory has been 

 so little altered as to be fit for the purposes of manufacture ; 

 and the tusks of the Mammoth, which are still better pre- 

 served in the frozen drift of Siberia, have long been collected 

 in great numbers as articles of commerce. 



In a specimen of the extinct Indian elephant {Elephas 

 ganesa, Fr. and C.) preserved in the British Museum, the tusks 

 are ten feet six inches in length, and in consequence of their 

 small amount of curvature, they project eight feet five inches 

 in front of the head. Their apparent disproportion to the size 



