A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex. 55
rapidly to vanish as soon as exposed to the light. The
bones, which have laid here for untold years, have lost
their osseous character ; they are full of water, and ready
to run into a shapeless mass so soon as their matrix is
disturbed. How shall they be saved? was a question
asked years ago, when the first of these elephant tusks was
discovered. It is written in the archives of the time
that—
Doctor Falconer to his aid then called Professor Busk in,
And, lo ! a mass amorphous they found this precious tusk in !
Another Professor (Mr. W. Davies, of the British Museum)
soon solved the difficulty; and now, as soon as the
skeleton is exposed, a skilful practitioner is ready with a
bucket of liquid size. With this preparation the uncovered
bones are speedily coated. Evaporation is arrested, and
the fossil is temporarily hardened in view of a more per-
manent dressing. But the more hazardous work sometimes
comes after this investment with size (or, perhaps, plaster
of Paris). Suppose the fossil in question to be the weighty
collar-bone or cranium of the mammoth—the British hairy
elephant! The mass to be removed, including a quantity
of the surrounding earth, will amount to half-a-ton, or
perhaps 12 cwt. How shall it be raised from its bed, full
twenty feet down in the earth, and conveyed entire two
miles to the museum which Sir Antonio Brady has pro-
vided? Here is the solution. A lofty pair of ship's shears
is rigged over the spot, ropes and pulleys are soon forth-
coming, and a gang of labourers are speedily working with
a will to lift some member, joint, or limb of the embedded
elephant out of his grave.
We may form some idea from these few facts of the
expense so voluntarily assumed by Sir Antonio, as public
and honorary trustee of treasures which, without his efforts,
would but too likely be lost to the nation for ever. The
wages of a gang of labourers who have been "knocked off"
the job of digging brick-earth on the spot where the bones
have been found, and who are kept waiting for perhaps
three days until the prize is ready for removal, are in