The Opelousas courier., 1892-10-15
GREAT SALES OF IVORY
HOW ELEPHANTS TUsKs ARE Dis
POSED OF ABROAD.
Something About the Making of
Knife.Handles. Etc Where the
Worlds Supply Comes From.

hu11GsE1anOl6S EEC.- w M0E@ aAS
Worlds Supply Comes From.
T7oUR times a year, in January,
- April, July and October. ivory
sales are held, and the display
of the goods in the warehouse is
one of the strange sights OF London, says
a writer in Leisure Hours. The floor is
crowded with ivory of all sorts and sizes,
in tusks and sections, and odds and
ends, some of it in huge teeth weighing
seventy pounds each, some mere trifes
of twenty pounds apiece, some mere
pygmy "scrivelloes," and crooked,
cracked, hollow, decayed and broken.
On every lot is a big clumsy number,
and every assemblage of lots has q no.
tice board giving the brokers' namc and
the first and last numbers of the lots he
has to sell. The wilderness Of teeth
seems all in movement round the gigan.
tic pair of travelling scales in the centre;
the curving tusks are like so many
worms, all strangely scratched aud
scribed, and are of all colors from white,
through the browns, to almost black;
and al expert can tell at a glance where
each came from, and can sort the lots
from the pink Calcutta to the black
West Coast which comes wrapped up In
the raw hides bearing the mysterious
name of "schroons."
What would an elephant think il he
gere to get a peep at this floor SO
crowded with his relatives incisors9
Here would be q meuento mort for him
more signii can't than that of the mummy
at an Egyptian feastl Each pair Of
tusks means a life, for the elephant 10
yet ignorant of the dentists forceps,
although we hear of elephants driven
mad with the toothachs and have
specimens of tusk disease In eur College
OF Surgeons Museum; and the few cases
of monstrosities having three, four, and
even min. tusks at a time may be- disre-
garded. Mr.. Stanley tells US that in the
Congo basin there are 200, 900 elephants,
each with fifty pounds of ivory in his
Jaws, the total being worth half a million
of money; but even that stock would
soon be exhausted if the Congo alone
had to fill this floor four times a year.
And besides the London sales there
are sales at Liverpool aud Antwerp aud
Rotterdam. Most of the Liverpooliy ivory
comes from the West Coast Of Africa,
and a quarter of it goes to Sheffield, a
quarter to London, aud half to Germany,
France and the United States. To the
London sales the ivory comes from all
parts.
There was a time when, according to
P.olEbius, the Ethiopian made his door
posts and fences of ivory; aud when the
ivory trade declined with the fall of
Rome, the market became SO gluated that
ivory could be had for the asking.
And, according to native tradition, the
elephant, within a few centuries, was
used as food, and his tusks were treated
as bones and thrown away. But that Ia
not the ease now, and through the length
and breadth of the continent he is hunted
for his teeth alone-not, however, for
his eye-teeth, for he has none, but.tor
his ineisors. It is the timber problem
over again. It takes as many minutes
to cut down a tree as it took years TO
grow it, and it takes considerably more
years for an elephant to grow his tusks
than it takes minutes to kill him.
John Ray says that Vertomannus ssw
in Sumatra a pair of tusks weighing s96
pounds, and there are records of single
tusks weighing as much as 300 pounds.
But nowadays the ordinary tusks average
about three to the hundredweight, 80
that 5000 elephants would have to be
killed to furnish the British market, and
some say rs, 600 are killed a year. And
as the elephant does not begin to breed
until he is thirty years old, and averages
but one youngster every ten years after
that until he is ninety, the rate Of in
crease is much too slow to oYertake the
slaughter.
But all the ivory does not come from
Africa, a good deal of it comes from In
dia; and a very little of the Indian
ivory is obtained without killing the
animal, owing to its being the custom
to cut a captive elephants tusks every
ten years. From the Malay Peninsula
and the islands thereabouts, there is q
fair ivory trade direct with China, and
the nests of balls, which are the highest
achievement of ivory turning, are al
most invariably made from the Island
teeth.
These balls are a terrible puzzle until
an hour or SOS careful manipulation re-
veals how they are managed. By careful
shifting it will be found that all the
larger holes come opposite each other,
and that it is down these shafts that the
work has been done. The Chinaaaan has
made probably fourteen holes in the
solid ball, diminishing as they approach
The center. Down tho walls of these
conical shafts he has spaced out the
number Of layers he requires, and begin
ming with the smallest ball, he has cut
each layer free and carved it. Il has
been a long job evidently, and as q
matter of fact he has worked i've days,
on an average, at each bali, and for his
three months work he was probably
paid at the rate OF FIVE shillings q week,
which is frst-class pay for q Chinaman.
The tusks for billiard balls fetch the
highest price in the trade; ae much as
$3.50 per hundredweight has been paid
for them, which is more than double the
rate for the ordinary kinds. AS ivory
ages the water it contains evaporates, and
for this reason the 1.-THE Commissioners
viii not use ivory scales, as the eyapora-
tion of the fluid makes them alter in
length and breadth.
Both chennicaIJv end menhan;callv ;voyv