Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/550

536 in London recently that weighed three hundred and twenty-five pounds, and measured eight and a half feet in length and twenty-two inches in circumference. Think of the muscular strength of head and neck necessary to support such a weight! The importance of these "ivories" in combat is evident by the dread of a "tusker" shown by elephants less favored. They are often broken in fighting, and always show marks of considerable wear. While even captive animals use them for a variety of purposes—e. g., a trained elephant when directed to pull a rope, will take it between his molar teeth and pass it over one of his tusks to get a good purchase. Nothing of less strength and elasticity than ivory could withstand the strain to which it is constantly exposed.

Foreign bodies, as bullets, arrowheads, or spear points, are often found imbedded in ivory. It is not a rare occurrence for the sportsman's bullet, or the native's spear, intended to pierce the elephant's brain, to penetrate the pulp cavity of the tusk and there become encysted or grown over with ivory and apparently have given the animal no trouble; but occasionally the viciousness of a "rogue," or the evident insanity of some unmanageable creature, has proved after death to have been caused by the suffering from inflammation and suppuration consequent upon the presence of a leaden ball in the "nerve of the tooth."

The best ivory is the African, and the finest quality from near the equator. Much of it is brought by natives from the interior to the coast and sold to Arab merchants, while many expeditions are organized by Europeans to go to the interior and collect the stores gathered by the native tribes. It is an extensive commerce. Four thousand pounds sterling, or twenty thousand dollars, is considered a good result for one season's expedition with one hundred and fifty men. Prices differ in different localities. The "portage," or distance from coast, size, condition, care in handling, and weight all affect price.

The African ivory trade is an ancient one, and in mediæval times Marco Polo, who lived from 1254 to 1324, speaks of the ivory traffic in Zanzibar being "astonishing in amount."

The tusks of the mammoth of northern Siberia, or the fossil supplies, are said to furnish almost the whole material of the Russian ivory workers. They are found in extraordinary abundance, and come principally from the neighborhood of the Lena and other arctic rivers and the coast islands. Mammoth tusks are more slender, more curved, and much larger in proportion than those of recent animals. Many have been found in the frozen morasses or in the solid ice, intact and in a beautiful state of preservation, having lain in their air-tight cases for many centuries.