sovka,
evidently a young animal, one of the tusks was, as we have noted,
attached to the skull at the time the remains were discovered, but it
was hacked out by one of the natives not long afterward. However, by
careful readjustment, guided by the marks left on skull and tusk by the
hatchet used in cutting the latter out, some interesting indications as
to the progressive growth and change of direction in the mammoth tusks
were secured, and Doctor Pfizenmayer has come to the conviction that in
the full-grown animals the direction of curve was not upward nor
outward, nor definitely inward, but after first describing a short
inward curve the further growth developed a downward curve. In a young
mammoth, such as that found on the Beresovka, this final curve is not
yet apparent at the lower end of the tusk bending inward. The abraded
surfaces to be noted on many mammoth tusks have been explained as due
to their use by these animals in digging up their food, grasses,
plants, shrubs, etc., out of the snow or ice which covered it during a
considerable part of the year in this far northern land.
The
downward curve, a prolongation of an inward curve, is most
characteristically shown in a mammoth tusk of the Petrograd Zoological
Museum. This tusk, which is a left one, measures but 98 cm. (3 ft. 1\ in.)
on a straight line and yet has a length of 1.59 m. (5 ft. 2j in.) if
measured along the curve. It has the peculiar spiral curvature to a
very marked extent. This is also observable in a most interesting
mammoth cranium, with left tusk attached, now in the museum of Cracow
University and found in 1851 at Bzianka, near Rzeszov, in West Galicia
under the loess. Here the tusk, while measuring almost exactly two
meters (6 ft. 6f in.) along its curve, has a direct length of only 1.57
cm. (about 5 ft. If in.); the circumference at the upper end is SO cm.
(llf in.). The spiral twisting of this tusk, although
