EXPENSIVE IVORY,

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 10

EXPENSIVE IVORY,

SALES AT £2OOO A TON. CEMETERIES IN THE JUNGLE. A two days* sale of ivory was held in Lhe London Commercial Sale Rooms, Mincing Lane, recently. Men had travelled from all parts of Europe and America to purchase the ivory, which had been brought from the tropical jungles of East Africa and the Congo. There were 38£ tons of it to be sold and the prices realised averaged about €2OOO a ton. | Not a single piece of ivory, however, was seen in the rooms. The entire cargo lay packed in the docks, where it had been on view for days beforehand —the great tusks, which measure 3ft or more in length, in canvas, and the smaller “points,” for billiards balls, which come from the female elephant, in small cases. There were, in addition to the elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, narwhal horns, seahorses* teeth, and boars’ tusks, all to be sold. The buyers watched the offering of the lots with .infailing care. Each man knew whether he particular kind of ivory offered was suitable for the articles he had to manufacture, which ranged from the hacks of hair brushes to bead necklaces. Prices were good, and slightly above those realised at previous sales. Billiards hall points realised £133 the hundred-weight, and solid tusks £lO3. Bidding for seahorses’ teeth was not so 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 42 years. He was Mr Smith, a representative of the firm of importers who were selling the ivory. “The supply and demand for ivory has been firm for the last 40 years,” said Mr Smith. “One must not think that these tusks being sold are the result of the wholesale slaughter of wild beasts. The natives organise expeditions to wander through the jungle until they find elephant cemeteries. These are places where elephants, roaming in search of food and water, have died. “The discovery of a cemetery means a good haul of ivory. The tusks remain sound and good, except in damp or swampy regions, for many years after the death of the elephant.** 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. --