Page 13 Advertisements Column 1

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18096, 11 June 1924, Page 13

Why are ivory billiard balls so expensive? The answer is that the supply of ivory, a natural growth depending mainly upon the tusks of elephants, is exceedingly limited. Nevertheless, if some wanderer through the illimitable forests of Central Africa, probably in the vicinity of Lake Vic- , toria Nyanza, could stumble upon a j certain "pit," the value of this coin- ' modity would drop to the merest fraction of its present worth. What becomes .of all the elephants that die? It ifl said that somewhere in the million square miles that constitute the African continent is a mighty pit, with precipitous sides, which contains the bones, and therefore the tusks, of countless thousands of elephants. How did they come there? It is said that wherever an African elephant may be, when it feels the approach of death it leaves the herd and "treks" unerringly for the death-pit. It may travel for days and even weeks, and when it arrives at the edge of the pit it leaps to its death. How much ivory I lies there! Who will discover it I * ■ * ' ~ ~'