Tusk

“ In the Leverian Museum there is a fossil elephant’s tusk found in England, about seven feet in length: On making a comparison between these it will be observed, that in the Leverian tusk there is not the smallest twist, and but a gentle curve; whereas in this animal they are much more crooked in every respect; the consequence of which is, that as the cavities for the reception of the tusks lie more horizontal (from a similar direction between the teeth and the condyle of the neck) , the tusks are much more elevated, and the ends pointing backwards. ”

“ Tusk cautiously asked.
"The railroad feller owes me a hund'ed dollars—I wouldn't be s'prised if it was moh, but a hund'ed'll do to start on. Now don't ask no questions! It don't consarn nobody but him an' me. You git it for me, an' I'll help you with that Dawson bird. You know the McElroy feller, don't you?"
"I've saw him hangin' 'round; but I can't go over there," Tusk grumbled. "Didn't I jest tell you Dawson buhned me out? Why don't you go?"
"Tusk, a gentl'man don't like to be askin' another gentl'man to pay him back a little friendly loan. ”

“ As sets, they may all differ from one another, notwithstanding that any one set is fit for ordinary use; and for an important match the whole twenty tusks are liable not to turn out three balls alike in size, weight and central gravity.
The best and dearest ivory is the rarest—the worst, of course, is cheapest. Some tusks, as they grow, acquire more moisture than others. The dentine in the millions of little cells is greater in one tusk than in another. ”

“ We may allude here to a very singular physical property which is possessed by the elephant's tusk. Specimens have frequently been obtained which were found to contain musket-bullets in their centre, surrounded with a species of osseous pulp differing from the ordinary character and constitution of ivory. ”

“ The African differs from the Asiatic in the formation of ivory, the tusks of the former being both thicker and heavier; the females also possess tusks, whereas those of the Asiatic variety have merely embryo tusks, which do not project more than two or three inches beyond the lips. I had a tusk of an African elephant that weighed 149 lbs. I have seen in Khartoum a pair that weighed 300 lbs., and I saw a single tusk of 172 lbs. ”

“ Should there be two pieces too few to complete the last square, thus □ ̅ ̅, then it is thought to be superlatively good, as representing the rare phenomenon of an elephant with only one tusk. Should there however be one too few, thus □ ̅ ̅, then it is called an elephant with two tusks, and the weapon is considered moderately good at best. ”

“ To do this, the wild boars were given two long tusks, as pointed as needles and sharp as knives. With one sweep of his head a boar could rip open a dog or a wolf, a bull or a bear, or furrow the earth like a ploughshare.
Now there were several cousins in the Tusk family. The elephant on land, and the walrus and narwhal in the seas; but none of these could plough ground, but because the boar's tusks grew out so long and were so sharp, and hooked at the end, it could tear open the earth's hard crust and root up the ground. ”

“ On the morning on which this Prince killed the tusk elephant, men came in order to build [the damaged houses in] the city. When they looked about that day, they said that the tusk elephant is still staying there, sleeping; and the men having become afraid, ran away.
After that, a man came, and having slowly come near the tusk elephant, when he was looking at it perceived that was dead. Thereupon the man having come near, when he looked [saw that] some one had stabbed the tusk elephant. ”

“ Tusks the Walrus had just climbed out of the water and had gone to sleep on the beach close to the mountain. Tusks was a great, good natured fellow, with a monstrous, heavy body and a pair of terrible looking tusks, which were not really terrible at all, for Tusks never used them except for digging clams. Big White Bear was up on the rocks, way, way above Tusks, and he had a great rock in his powerful paws, as big a rock as he could lift! ”

“ The large proportion of very small tusks which are now brought to market annually is a sure indication of the increasing number of elephants that die young. To show to what size these tusks might attain, the American consul states that there was in a Sheffield showroom an African elephant’s tusk nine feet long, twenty-one inches in girth, and weighing one hundred and sixty pounds. The value of the tusk was one hundred and thirty pounds, and it is said that an animal large enough and strong enough to carry such a pair would attract far more attention than Jumbo did. ”

“ Generally one tusk is several inches shorter than the other, having been worn down in digging for the roots on which the animal is fond of feeding; for elephants seem to dig with one of the tusks only, and never with both. ”

“ Petherick in his Account of Egypt, Soudan, &c. says that in Central Africa the size of tusks differs in different latitudes, those towards the north being shorter, thicker, less hollow, and heavier than those of the south. Thus a tusk from the Nouaer, Dinka, or Shilook tribes will weigh 120 lbs., while one from Bari would weigh only 70 lbs. or 80 lbs. ”

“ If you can tell me the approximate height of this elephant and if a single or double tusker and any distinguishing peculiarities, I will write to the deputy commissioner and get it proclaimed. We had a man killed in one of our forest villages at Mendabari recently; and our babus were held up the other day by a rogue. But this animal has one tusk broken off short. A double tusker killed one of our sawyers near here and was proclaimed and a reward of fifty rupees and the tusks offered. ”

“ It is more probably to be accounted for by the same reasons which explain the possession of horns, tusks, or mane by the males only of some land mammals. Rarely the right tusk is developed instead of the left, and sometimes the female has a weapon like that of her mate. One female has been taken with both tusks developed, one being seven feet in length, the other five inches longer. Like his fellow-gladiators of the sea, the narwhal will occasionally thrust his gigantic foil into the side of a ship, where it usually breaks off, and, fitting the hole like a plug, seldom causes a leak. ”

“ When it is fastened to the igimang, the bend of the tusk facilitates the disengagement of the harpoon head, which turns its back to that of the tusk. Attached to the line at the level of the ivory knob which has been mentioned is the teliqbing (Fig. 424) , into the hole of which the knob fits closely. As the line from the tokang to the teliqbing is just long enough to allow it to be pulled down far enough to reach the knob, it holds shaft and head firmly together so long as the tusk remains in its position. ”

“ As many as ten of these tusks have been found lying together, weighing from 150 to 300 lbs. each. The largest are rarely sent out of the country, many of them being too rotten to be made use of, while others are so large that they cannot be carried away, and are sawn up in blocks or slabs on the spot with very considerable waste, so that the loss of weight in the produce of a tusk before the ivory comes to market is of no trifling amount. ”

“ It is difficult to see how this circular tusk could be used for tearing down branches, twigs and leaves for food or as a weapon of warfare, and perhaps this difficulty may partly ac- count for the fact that the fantastic circular form has long since passed away, while the straighter tusks remain until now. Africa is supposed to have been the original home of the elephant and our American forms traveled over a land bridge into Europe on through Asia and over another land bridge into Alaska. ”

“ In the case of the narwhal such an abnormal structure is easily accounted for, seeing that to use effectively the long tusk with which the male is armed a considerable amount of mobility in the neck is absolutely essential. ”

“ Hate to do it—Ugh!" The right swing went smashing out—not to the jaw, but at just the proper instant to the pit of Tusk's stomach. In another fraction of a second Brent was five feet away, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and watching the big fellow crumple up.
For he was clutching, tearing open his shirt and swaying. His eyes stared wildly, his face was drawn and his mouth was open to its fullest capacity in a struggle for breath. Then he went down, all of a heap ”

“ Pendants of tusks or of the canine teeth of some animal, such as the four shown in the top row in Fig. 8, are, I am told, largely bought as a protection by men who tend wild animals in shows etc. The middle object in the top row is a cornelian mounted in metal and worn by Jewesses as a charm against the evil eye, and the second row consists of a boot, two canine teeth, and a tusk. ”

“ Very large and bulky elephants appear to carry small tusks. Why they appear small is this: A tusk reaches a great length and a great lip diameter in a comparatively small number of years, but is very hollow and weighs light. ”

“ But we know how much the tusks of this animal vary according to the sex and the individual, and that these teeth sometimes, even in old females, acquire a considerable size. ↑ I think the attention of Naturalists ought to be turned also to the Elephants of the different parts of Africa. We meet, among the skulls from this Continent, with some which, as regards the extraordinary shortness of the tusk-jaw-bones, are proportionately shorter and much broader than is generally the case. ”

“ The position and the direction of these two upper tusks, which rise upright, and then bend in the form of a circle, have made some skilful naturalists, such as Grew, imagine that these tusks ought not to be looked upon as teeth, but as horns. They founded their opinion upon the circumstance that in all animals the sockets of the teeth in the upper jaw open downwards; that in the babiroussa, as in the other animals, the sockets are turned downwards, except those of these two great tusks, which, on the contrary, are turned upwards ”

“ The tusks of the wild boar, especially those of the lower jaw, are so long and sharp, that the animal makes use of them as a bull does of his horns. The upper ones rest directly upon the lower, and his constant grinding of them, especially when he is enraged, soon wears the points into a broad and sharp edge. United, these tusks form a perfect circle five or six inches in diameter. The services of our surgeon, Dr. Gallegos, were immediately called into requisition, who dressed the wound, while the companions of the suffering hunter endeavored to avenge him. ”

“ His tusks, which become of an enormous weight when he grows old, not being seated in a vertical position, as the horns of other animals, form two long levers, and being in an almost horizontal direction, fatigue his head prodigiously, and draw it downwards, so that the animal is sometimes obliged to make holes in the wall of his lodge to support them, and ease himself of their weight. ”

“ The hoof is divided into four short unconnected toes, which they can spread out like the feet of the camel when moving over the soft mud, or when swimming. The skin, which is almost entirely hairless, except in a few spots, is of a yellowish colour, the lower part assuming almost a pinkish hue. The head is hideous in the extreme, and armed with huge crooked tusks, the object of which is not so much for defence, as to dig up grass from the bottom of the river. These tusks afford the whitest ivory to be procured. ”

“ There are no other teeth, properly so called, but in the upper jaw are two tusks, which supply the ivory of commerce, and which are changed once during the life of the animal. Their enormous weight and size are almost fabulous, and combined with the trunk, make us cease to wonder that the whole body should have strength alone as its attribute, and be entirely wanting in grace. ”

“ In some crania, there are tusks and incisors in both jaws, but in others neither, or the former only. The tusks scarce project beyond the jaw, probably never beyond the lip. The absence of the teeth in some may be owing to age. A single spiraculum opens near the top of the head. ”

“ The tusks in the lower jaw are sharper than those in the upper, but from their shortness it seems hardly possible that they can be used as weapons of attack. They must, however, greatly strengthen those in the upper jaw, from being ground so as to fit closely against their bases. Neither the upper nor the lower tusks appear to have been specially modified to act as guards, though no doubt they are to a certain extent used for this purpose. ”

“ Not more than one in three hundred has tusks; they are merely provided with short grubbers, projecting generally about three inches from the upper jaw, and about two inches in diameter; these are called 'tushes' in Ceylon, and are of so little value that they are not worth extracting from the head. They are useful to the elephants in hooking on to a branch and tearing it down. ”

“ The trunk or snout is so long and of such form that it serves him as a hand, for he both eats and drinks by bringing his food and drink to his mouth by its means, and by it he helps up his master or keeper, and also overturns trees by its strength. Besides his two great tusks, he has four teeth on each side of his mouth, by which he eats or grinds his food, each of these teeth being almost a span long, as they lie along the jaw, by two inches high and about as much in breadth. The tusks of the male are larger than those of the female. ”

“ It is distinguished from them by the teeth, and by the size of the tusks, which are from ten to fifteen feet long, much curved, and have a spiral turn outwards. The alveali of the tusks are also larger, and are protruded farther. The neck is shorter, the spinal processes larger, all the bones of the skeleton are stronger, and the scabrous surfaces for the insertion of the muscles more prominent, than in the other species. The skin being covered with thick hair, induces M. Cuvier to consider that it was the inhabitant of a cold region. ”