single city! The African elephant must be
decreasing, even as it has been extirpated in the north of that
continent, where it abounded in the time of the Carthaginians, and
the time may come when ivory shall be counted as one of the precious
things of the past. Even now the price is going up, and is nearly
double what it was a year ago. Now enhanced price means either greater
demand or deficient supply, and it is probably to this last we must
look for an answer to the question. True it is that if we want ivory
animals must be killed to get it, for the notion that some people
have gained from obsolete works on natural history, to the effect
that elephants shed their tusks, is an erroneous one. It is generally
supposed that elephants do not shed their tusks at all, not even
milk-teeth, but that they grow _ab initio_, as do the incisors of
rodents, from a persistent pulp, and continue growing through life.
Mr. G. P. Sanderson, the author of 'Thirteen Years among the Wild
Beasts,' whom I have to thank for much and valuable information about
the habits of these animals, assured me, when I spoke to him about
the popular idea of there being milk-tusks, that he had watched
elephants from their birth, and had never known them to shed their
tusks, nor had his mahouts ever found a shed tusk; but Mr. Tegetmeier
has pointed out that there are skulls in the museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons, showing both the milk and permanent tusks, the
latter pushing forward the former, which are absorbed to a great
extent, and leave nothing but a little blackened stump, the size of
one's finger. This was brought to my notice by a correspondent of
_The Asian_, "Smooth-bore," and I have lately had the pleasure of
meeting Mr. Tegetmeier, and speaking to him on the subject. There
is apparently no limit to the growth of tusks, so that under
favourable circumstances they might attain enormous dimensions,
owing to the age of the animal, and absence of the attrition which
keeps the incisors of rodents down. As in the case of rodents,
malformations of whose incisors I have alluded to some time back,
the tusks of elephants assume various freaks. I have heard of their
overlapping and crossing the trunk in a manner to impede the free
use of that organ. The tusks of fossil elephants are in many cases
gigantic. There is a head in the Indian Museum, of which the tusks
_outside the socket_ measure 9-3/4 feet, and are of very curious
formation. The two run