ELEPHAS, L.—The latest form of true elephant which obtained its sustenance in temperate latitudes is that which Blumenbach called primigenius, the " Mammoth " of the Siberian collectors of its tusks (fig. 119). Its remains occur chiefly, if not exclusively, in pleistocene deposits, and have even been found in tur bary near Holyhead. Its grinders (fig. 116) are broader, and have narrower and more numerous and close-set transverse plates and ridges, than in other elephants. In the isting Indian species, e. g., (fig. 117), the molars are relatively narrower, the plates (d d) are less numerous, and their enamelled border (e e) is festooned. In the African elephant (fig. 118) the plates are still fewer, are relatively larger, and so expanded at the middle as to present a lozenge shape. The Elephas prisms, Gdf., of European • Oateografia di un Mastodonte Anguatidente, 4to, Turin, 1851.
pliocene beds, has molars most like those of the present African species. The tusks of the elephant, like those of the Mastodon, Upper molar, Asiatic Elephant.
consist of true ivory, which shows, in transverse fractures or sections, strife proceeding in the arc of a circle from the Upper molar, African Elephant.
centre to the circumference in opposite directions, and forming, by their decussations, curvilinear lozenges. This character is a valuable one in the determination of fragments of fossil tusks.
The tusks of the extinct Elephas primigenius, or mam moth, have a bolder and more extensive curvature than those of the Elephas inclictm ; 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 Mammoth, 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 of the skull is truly extraordinary, and exemplifies the maxi mization of dental development.
The mammoth is more completely known than most other extinct animals by reason of the discovery of an entire speci men preserved in the frozen soil of a cliff at the mouth of the river Lena in Siberia. The skin was clothed with a reddish wool, and with long black hairs. It is now preserved at St. Petersburg, together with the skeleton (fig. 119). This mea sures, from the fore part of the skull to the end of the muti lated tail, 16 feet 4 inches ; the height, to the top of the dorsal spines, is 9 feet 4 inches ; the length of the tusks, along the curve, is 9 feet 6 inches. Parts of the skin of the head, the eye-ball, and of the strong ligament of the nape which helped to sustain the heavy head and teeth, together with the hoofs, remain attached to the skeleton. These huge elephants, adapted by their clothing to endure a cold climate, subsisted on the branches and foliage of the northern pines, birches, willows, etc. ; and during the short summer they probably migrated northward, like their contemporary the musk-buffalo which still lingers on, to the degree of N. latitude, re treating during the winter to more temperate quarters. The mammoth was preceded in Europe by other species of ele phant--e.g., Elephas prisms, Goldfuss, and Elephas meridionalis, Nesti, which, during the pliocene period, seem not to have gone northward beyond temperate latitudes.