Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1905-11-11
ELEPHANTS PASSING.
Demand Cor Ivory the Cause of Great
Slaughter.

demand toI ivory the Cause of Great
Slaughter.
The great quantity of ivory annually
exported from Africa, and especially
from the Congo Free State, is causing
much anxiety for the future fate of the
Dlg KING of the iungies. As there are
otnclal statistics of the amount of the
ivory exported. of how much is sold in
a year on the exchanges of London. I.iv-
erpool and Antwerp, the exchanges of
ivory IN Europe, the weight of this ivory
/ the number of elephants required to fur
nlsh It, there Is no great difficulty in
hgurlng out approximately the number
OF years 1t will take to annihilate the LAST
of the.elephants in Africa.
The year 1897 may be taken as a sam
PIE. In that year there was sold in the
aforementioned exchanges $50 tons of
ivory. To this should be added several
tons to come nearer the truth. but let
us De generous IN our mathematica cal
culations. 1t will give the elephant some
few extra years to live and will be
consolation to many who cannot but feel
Indignation at the thought that the big,
strong, useful and rather harmless beast
is in danger of disappearing from the
earth.
In August, 1897, was sold on the ex-
change III Antwerp about 12,000 tusks,
representing the death of 6000 elephants.
as each one has two tusks. The whole
weight of these $4,000 tusks was about
10000 pounds. That means that each
elephant gave about 20 pounds of ivory
| ms, OF course, is the Arithmetic me-
dunn" only, as there may have been
| tusks weighing 60 to 10 pounds. If we
look upon such ornamental tusks as, for
instance, were seen among the Queens
| jubilee presents at the St. Louis fair,
! their weight must be two or three times
the average weight of a tusk.
Now, II remains only to know the num-
Der of elephants iii Africa. This may be
| difficult to decide fairly correctly The
great Afrlc2n explorer, Henry NJ Stan
ley, however, has said that some years
| ago he estimated the number of ele-
| plants i'll Africa TO be from 100000 to
| 100000, and in Congo from 100000 to
100000. One ton is about 300 pounds,
or some little more. Therefore we reach
the regrettable figure of about 10000
| elephants needed to furnish the ivory
! sold in 1897. Is not that figure high
enough to justify apprehension as to the
| fate of the elephant. and does it not ap-
! pear certain that the elephant rapidly
| approaches possible and complete ami
| hilation?
There are in this matter fortunately.
| some qualifying circumstances. AS the
natives for years and general tons have
been hunting elephants in Africa mostly
L "
| have little use for the brute when dead
they have been in the habit of burying
| the tusks. and now. since they are en-
| pected to pay a certain tax" in ivory
| to the Congo government, they have be-
| gun to unearth large quantities of ivory
| Thus it is sure that part of the ivory eX-
| ported in the year 1897 was not from
| freshly killed elephants.
| 1t is not the idea that all killing of the
| elephant should be stopped. Ivory is the
| best-paying article to the Congo state,
and as it takes colossal sums to run that
| country, ivory must be sold. But how Or
where TO draw the line between too much
and moderate killing of elephants? King
! Leopold of Belgium, sovereign of the
| Congo Free State. gave out already, in
| 1889, royal decree forbidding the
white" employees to hunt elephants. But
as there are between 20.O00,000 and 30
| 100000 natives in Congo who for hun-
dreds of years have been killing ele-
! plants without discretion nor any one in
| terfering with them, how can we ex-
| pect them to stop killing elephants, or
! how can any control be kept on them,
| living in jungles as the most do. Be
| sides, they are paid for ivory in mer-
| chandise brought from Europe, and they
are Intensely greedy for them. Thus the
| fact remains that the determination of
the elephant goes on at fearful rate.
Some elephants are born every year,
| but, in proportion to the killing. the num-
Der must be small. The elephant sow
| bears her babies" between her twelfth
| to eighteenth years, and two are al
ways born at the same time. SO it can
| be seen that the process of natural in
crease is slow.
There has for years been going on Il
movement in Belgium favoring the do
mestication of the elephant. This has
| also been done in the Soudan by the
English during their long campaign
against the fanatic dervishes. Cen Cor
| don used the elephant to carry heavy
! burdens Of ammunition. the same Cor
| don who was killed by the natives there
| and whose death the Englishmen in vain
! for years tried to avenge. until Lord
| Kitchener succeeded in doing so.
! When Africa develops into an agricul-
| tural country-and the soil of the Congo
| at least. is of the best, NOT a stone to
! be found for miles-the elephant will be
needed to execute such a work as our
! yorse or oxen perform For this reason
! It is hoped that something may he done
! which for an indefinite time will put
| off, the moment when civilization with
its refinement and vandalism has sue
ceeded in the humiliation of the useful
king of the African junglcS. the noble
elephant-St. Louis Globe Democrat.
Automobile Farming.