IVORY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 9 April 1927, Page 11

IVORY

TWO-DAY'S sale of ivory was opened in the London Commercial Sale Looms, Mincing- lane, recently, states the “Daily Express." Men had travelled from all parts of Europe and America to purchase the ivory, which had been brought from the tropieal jungles of East Africa and the Congo. There were 38A tons of it to be sold, and the prices realised averaged abcu: £2OOO a ton. Not a single piece of ivory, however, was seen in the rooms. The l entire cargo lay packed in the docks, where it had been on view for days beforehand—the great tusks which measure nine feet or more m length, in canvas, and the smaller “points," fer billiard balls, which come from the female elephant, in 3inall cases. There were, in addition to the elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, narwhal horns, seahorse teeth, walrus teeth, and boars’ tusks, all to be sold. The buyers watched the offering of the lots with unfailing care. Each man knew whether the particular kind of ivory offered was suitable for the articles he had to manufacture, -which ranged from the baeks of hairbrushes to bead r-ccklaces. Prices were good, and slightly above those realised at previous sales. Billiard ball points realised £133 the hundredweight, and solid tusks £lO3. Bidding for seahorses’ teeth was not sn brisk. An interested spectator stood in one corner of the sale rooms, where he had been in attendance at these ivory sales for the last forty-two years. He wa3 Mr. Smith, a representative of the firm

BIG LONDON SALE

of importers who were selling the ivory. “The supply and demand for ivory has been firm for the last forty years, ’ ’ said Atr. Smith to a “Daily Express” representative. “Ytu must not think that these tusks being sold are the result of the wholesale slaughtering* of wild beasts. The natives organise expeditions to wander through the jungle until they find elephant cemeteries. These are places where elephants, roaming in seaeh of food and water, have died. The discovery of a cemetery means a good haul of i vr.rv. ’ ’ Experts themselves find it hard to tell the difference between soft and hard ivory, but usually East Africa produces soft ivory and the west coast hard. The natives used, at one time, to attempt to increase the weight of the tusks by filling them with stones and sand, but, so. often was the trick discovered, that they have practically stopped resorting to it.