THE WORLD'S TOOTH MARKET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2968, 1 February 1911, Page 80

THE WORLD'S TOOTH MARKET.

FACTS ABOUT IVORY. The world's ivory -wH is in Mincing Lane, where there are two sales yearly, each spring and each autumn, at the

Commercial Bale Rooms. All the ivory which reaches the London docks at various times of the year is carefully stored until the time of the nearest sale. Then all the ivory is sorted out and arranged, as if in a museum, being graded according to weight. A few days oefore the sale takes place there are special "view" days when purchasers go around with catalogues in their hands to take particulars of the lots. The main grades consist of all weights down to 601 b, the teeth between 401 b to 601 b and between 20.1 b to 401 b; teeth weighing below 201 b are classed as hollows and solids under the name of scrivelloes. The average weight of these gigantic teeth is 801 b, though specimens have been know to exceed 2001 b Good ivory sells at a nrice somewhere about £l6O a hundredweight, though the best ivory is worth considerably more thaa this sum, and ivory cut for certain pin poses is worth double. At the present time there is a great scarcity of good teeth, and prices fluctuate greatly. Altogether the world's supoly for a year would represent the destruction of at least 60,000 elephants, but fully 85 per cent, of the quantity used is "dead" ivcry. —"Dead" Ivory.— Elephants have their recognised cemeteries or places to which they retire when they feel that death is stealing over them. It is in these cemeteries that the largest quantity of ivory has been collected, and only a small quantity is now obtained by hunters. In addition a large amount of ivory is found in the forests, having been shed by elephants in the ordinary course of their growth. Strangely enough a great quantity of ivory comes from Northern Siberia. This is many thousands of years old, of course, and consist® of tusks of extinct mammoths. These tusks are found embedded in that natural refrigerator the ice-bound soil of the region, and many of them are of enormous size. This fossil ivory, however, is of inferior quality, being very brittle, and some of it is worth as little as £2 a hundredweight. —The Deadly Billiard Ball.—

Ivory has long been stored by savage chiefs as a form in which to keep their wealth and to obtain importance amongst native chiefs. Much of this ivory finds its way into our markets, which sometimes obtain quantities of the substance m- the form of idols Which have been shipped from heathen temples. Possibly there is no other substance which has caused such a toll in human lives.

Before the ivory reaches this countryit has been the centre of some of the darkest deeds which have taken place in the Dark Continent. Some have gone so far as to hint that the billiard ball is the most gruesome object with which civilised man plays, each billiard ball having caused the destruction of a human life. '

It has been said that the destruction of all the ivory in Africa would be the greatest blessing which could be ' conferred upon that continent. Certainly the blackest deeds of man's inhumanity, and has involved a terrible succession of slavery and wholesale murder. —Quantity and Quality in Tusks. —

At the present there is a dearth of I ivory has had much to do with some of ! pulsion of an American ring which has endeavoured to purchase a large portion of the wonld's supply in order to force up prices. Many of the African chiefs possess large stores, and these heathens are quite as wideawake to market possibilities as the Yankees. They never place too much ivory on the market at once. They have arranged matters in the same way as the South African diamond market has been arranged, and the substance is never sold in such quantities as to cause a glut on the market. Th-3 best kind of ivory is that which comes from Zanzibar and other parts of the East Coast, ivory which is technically known as "soft teeth." _ The British Museum not long ago acquired a tusk of good Zanzibar ivory, for which it paid the big sum of £350. The bulk of the "hard teeth" comes from the West Coast of Africa. Another class of the substance is "bangle ivory," consisting of the teeth used to make the bangles which are worn by the high-caste ladies of India. Th»> best ivory of all is used for making billiard balls. The tusks from which billiard balls are made are from 4in to 6in in diameter at the thickest end, and the ; substance is sold to billiard ball makers in the form of small blocks. —Elephant's Toothache. — The teeth exhibit the won derfully j pathetic fact that elephants suffer severely j from the ravages of toothache. It is un- I thinkable what an elephant's pain must be, but many of the teeth are entirely j hollowed out' by disease; in addition to ! this, elephants have very sensitive nerves, j so that a touch of toothache is often the cause of madness. Those who have experience of elephants in captivity say that toothache affects the | elephant in a more, severe manner than ! it does any other animal, and it is the | frequent cause of it running amuck. This ! is scarcely to be wondered at when it is • considered that the tooth is yards long. j True ivory may easily be distinguished . from every other kind of tooth substances j and from al 1 imitations by means of the , lines of different shades forming minute lozenge-shaped spaces. Probably half the i ivory which, comes to Europe is worked up in England. j —A Lost Art. — , | Ivory has been used since we have any j records —the earliest drawings in existence . showing human handiwork have been found on large tusks. A remarkable fact ! is that the ancient artists used extremely j large slabs of ivory; evidently they pes- j sessed some method of softening, bending, I and flattening ivory, but the secret has been entirely lost. < Many attempts have been made to emu-

late the ancients by treating the substance with various chemicals, but none of these experiments has been of practical use. Some of the works of Phidias consisted of gigantic statues of ivory and gold, and some of the figures actuallv had a statm-e of 40ft. To-day other kinds of teeth are used in the arts and manufactures besides those of elephants. Thus a firm of Sheffield cv-tiers exhibits in its showrooms a pair of narwhal tusks, or convoluted horns, over 6ft in length, from which, it is surmised, is derived the idea of the fabled unicorn" represented in the Royal Arms. The same firm exhibits a curiously contrived loving cup made of an ivory ring from the largest elephant's tooth ever cut, this having a - diameter of Biin and a depth of 9in.