Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1892-12-23
Great Sales of Ivory.

sights OF LONDON, says u WiieVi 81"
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
trifles of twenty pounds apiece, some
mere pygmy "scrivelloes," and crook
ed, cracked, hollow, decayed and
broken. On every lot is big clumsy
number, and every assemblage OF lots
has a notice board giving the brokers
name and the first and last numbers
of the lots he has to sell. The wilder
ness of teeth seem all in movement
round the gigantic pair OF travelling
scales in the centre; the curving tusks
are like so many WORMS, all strange
ly scratched and scribed, and are OF
all colors from white, through the
browns, to almost black; and an eX-
pert can tell at u 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 were to get peep at this floor SO
crowded with his relatives incisors?
Here would be a memento mort for
him more significant than that OF the
mummy at an Egyptian feast. Each
pair of tusks means life, for the ele-
phant is vet ignorant Of the dentist s
forceps. although we hear OF ele-
phants driven mad with the tooth
ache and have specimens OF tusk dis
ease i'm our College Of Surgeons Mua
scum; and the few cases OF monstros-
tiles having three. four, and even nine
tusks at a time may be disregarded
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 year.
And besides the London sales there
are sales at Liverpool and Antwerp
and Rotterdam Most of the Liver
pool ivory comes from the West Coast
of Africa, and quarter of it goes to
Sheffield, quarter to London, and
half to Germany, France and the
United States. To the London sales
the ivory comes from all parts.
There was time when, according
to Polybius, the Ethiopian made his
door-posts and fences of ivory; and
when the ivory trade declined with
the fall of Rome, the market became
so glutted 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 is not the
case 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 for
his incisors. 1t is the timber problem
over again. 1t takes as many min
utes to cut down tree as it took
years to grow it, and it takes consid-
erably more years for an elephant to
grow his tusks than it takes minutes
to kill him.
John Ray says that Vertomann us
saw in Sumatra pair of tusks weigh
ing 1856 pounds, and there are records
of single tusks weighing as much as
200 pounds. But nowadays the or
binary tusks average about three to
the hundredweight, SO that $4,000
elephants would have to be killed to
furnish the British market, and some
say $4,000 are killed year. And as
the elephant does not begi n 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 increase is much too slow
to overtake the slaughter.
But all the ivory does not come
from Africa, a good deal Of it comes
from India and very little of the
Indian ivory is obtained without kill
ing the animal, owing to its being
the custom to cut captive ele-
plants tusks every ten years. From
the Malay Peninsula and the islands
Whereabouts, there is u fair ivory
trade direct with China, and the
nests of balls, which are the highest
achievement of ivory turning, are
almost invariably made from the
island teeth.
These balls are terrible puzzle I'M
til an hour or SOS careful manipula-
ton reveals how they are managed.
By careful shifting it will be found
that all the larger holes come op.
posite each other, and that it is down
JlltSe sIldllS lIdI lilc Woih has Dttu
done. The Chinamau has made
probably fourteen holes in the solid
ball, diminishing as they approach
the center. Down the walls OF these
conical shafts he has spaced out the
number of layers lie requires, and
beginning with the smallest ball, he
has cut each layer free and carved it.
1t has been a long job evidently, and
as n matter of fact he has worked
five days, on an average, at each
ball, and for his three months work
he was probably paid at the rate Of
five shillings week. which is first
class pay for a Chinaman.
The tusks for billiard balls fetch
the highest price in the trade; as
much as $3.50 per hundredweighth has