Year: 1874

BILE Early Extinction


The London Telegraph says: There


is good ground to believe that high upon


the table-land ofsCentral Africa, on the


further side of Tangany ika, ivory is as


plentiful as in the fossil beds of Sibe-


ria. whence are dug up the huge NAM


moth tusks that furnish nine-tenths of


the raw material operated upon by our
London ivory-turners. Indeed it would


almost seem as if the energy of the


Zanzibar merchants had at length found


O way to Sinbad's charmed hill, for


within the last year the: importation of


ivory has doubled; ordoes each pair of
tusks that finds it's way to England rep
resent slaughtered elephant, and is a


war of determination being waged, the
ultimate effect of which must be to rem
der the huge brute assextinct as the di-
nornis itself? The later, I'VE fear, is
the true answer. TIE elephant, like
the whale,Sis dying 0a1s rz1n India he is


becoming almost aa Ire as is the red
deer in England. % hugters have
driven him faTther ana further inland


unless something be done to protect


him, he will before long become, upon
the main continent at any rate, alto
gether extinct, and Sahib will have to
import his elephants from Birmah and
Ceylon, much as we in En- land import
our horses from Ireland, and our foxes
from any country that will send them to
us in sufficient number and of sufficient
size and strength.


In Africa, it is true, the evil is not yet
past remedy. Over the vast table-lands
of that unknown continent the elephant
still roves in countless droves, and still
holds in undisputed possession vast
tracts to which rum and glass beads,
cast-iron muskets and clay pipes, printed
calico and coarse gunpowder, have never
yet found their wav. The respite, how
ever, will probably be but brief. AL
most daily, caravans start from the
Zanzibar coast to the interior, carrying
with them all that the native heart
needs to make it glad, and willing to
take payment in ivory for all that they
have to offer. For ten or dozen large
tusks the African chief can dress his
wives out in beads and striped calico,
furnish himself and his ministers with
rum and gunpowder, and can so afford
to wait patiently until next years hunt
ing season commences. The danger
which the chase involves is exaggerated.
The elephant is a dangerous beast to
meet face to face, but he is easily Cir
cumvented by craft. He can be shot
with poisoned arrows he can be fright
ened by midnight fires, and driven into
pitfalls or, if the hunter have the
requisite nerve and courage, he can be
followed and hamstrung.


And so the butchery goes on. Year by
year Zanzibar sends inland a larger |
H. Il E~oIo HrT
larger number of tusks is carried down |
to the coast. We may regret the idle |
waste, but we are powerless to stop it. |
native chief that it is his duty to allow
the elephant to multiply in peace. We
here in England are burning up our coal,
and leaving posterity to take care of
itself and pay it's own national debt
and we can hardly expect the wooly-
headed African to display virtue of
which we ourselves are ignorant. What
is il to him If in a century or so the
elephant be altogether extinct, so long
rs in the interval ne is able to drink his
rum and to dress out his ebony charmer
in gaudy yellow and red. But, after
all, rapidly extinct IS the great brute is
becoming, it is yet certain tsss.twe shall
have supplied his place long before we
begin to feel his loss. The tramway
will supplant the elephant in India as
surely as the train has supplanted the
stage coach in England and science
will discover some material fully. as
} astic as ivory, and equally capable of
loing service in the shape of billiard
oall-the one and only article of mod
srn luxury for which at present ivory is
indispensable. Indeed, it is
lot improbable that, long before the
elephant is finally extinct, science may
nave taught us to SO fuse glass as to im-
part to it all the elasticity of ivory
exactly as it has already taught us to
upply the place of the bamboo with
pillars and pipes, and that of
he sponge with fbrous India-rubber.