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478 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT
on; indeed, the very small ones trot along beneath their mothers' bodies and so are out of harm's way.*
THE SALE OF ELEPHANTS
The
great dealer in wild animals, Carl Hagenbeck, of Stellingen, near
Hamburg, Germany, estimates that since the founding of his business he
has sold more than 5,000 elephants, both of the African types and of
the Asiatic ones.f An interesting fact communicated by him is that,
somewhere on the western battle front in France, a large Burmese
elephant, widely known in Germany as "Jenny," is employed in connection
with the military operations, presumably for traction.
EXTINCT ELEPHANTS
The tallest of the extinct elephants appears to have been straight-tusked Elephas antiquus of
Europe, its height being estimated by Pohlig and Pilgrim at from 15 ft.
to 16 ft., while the height of the tallest specimen of the North
American Elephas imperator is a trifle over 13 ft. 6 in., and the southern European Elephas meridionalis of the Paris Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle is only 12 ft. 6-3/4 in. in height. Elephas columbi'of
North America seems to have been considerably shorter, its height
ranging from 9 ft. to 11 ft., the latter measurement being three or
four inches less than that of the tallest examples of the living
African species. As to the mounted museum specimens, Prof. Henry
Fairfield Os-born calls attention to the fact that, in most cases, the
tips of the dorsal spines have been unduly raised above the superior
spine of the scapula, leading to an exaggerated estimate of the true
height of the elephant.J
*H. Warington Smith, "Five Years in Siam," London, 189<? ^p. 58, 59.
fPersonal communication from Carl Hagenbeck, November 1, 1915.
tHenry
Fairfield Osborn, "Review of the Pleistocene of Europe, Asia, and
Northern Africa"; Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol.
XXVI, pp. 215-315, 1915. See pp. 262, 263.
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