in constant use. It is estimated that during
the last two centuries at least 100 pairs of mammoths' tusks have been
each year exported from the frozen lands of Siberia. In early mediaeval
times the trade existed, and some ivory carvings and drinking horns of
that age appear to be fashioned from this more ancient ivory.

Already, then, within the human period we find elephants closely
similar to those of our own time, far more numerous and more widely
distributed than in our own day, and happily established all over the
temperate regions of the earth--even in our Thames Valley and in the
forests where London now spreads its smoky brickwork. When we go
further back in time--as the diggings and surveying of modern man
enable us to do--we find other elephants of many different species,
some differing greatly from the three species I have mentioned, and
leading us back by gradual steps to a comparatively small animal,
about the size of a donkey, without the wonderful trunk or the immense
tusks of the later elephants. By the discovery and study of these
earlier forms we have within the last ten years arrived at a knowledge
of the steps by which the elephant acquired in the course of long ages
(millions of years) his "proboscis" (as the Greeks first called it),
and I will later sketch that history.

But now let us first of all note some of the peculiarities of living
elephants and the points by which the two kinds differ from one
another. The most striking fact about the elephant is its enormous
size. It is only exceeded among living animals by whales; it is far
larger than the biggest bull, or rhinoceros, or hippopotamus. A
fair-sized Indian elephant weighs two to three tons (Jumbo, one of the
African species, weighed five), and requires as food 60 lb. of oats,
1-1/2 truss of hay, 1-1/2 truss of corn a day, costing together in
this country about 5_s._; whereas a large cart-horse weighs 15 cwt.,
and requires weekly three trusses of hay and 80 lb. of oats, costing
together 12_s._ or about 1_s._ 8-1/2_d._ a day. It is this which has
proved fatal to the elephant since man took charge of the world. The
elephant requires so much food and takes so many years in growing up
(twenty or more before he is old enough to be put to work), that it is
only in countries where there is a super-abundance of forest in which
he can be allowed to grow to maturity at his own "charges" (so to
speak) that it is worth while to attempt to domesticate