With Flashlight and Rifle -* 



Immense quantities of ivory have been exported in> 

 recent years. In the last ten years the Antwerp ivory 

 market has taken on an average the tusks of 18,500 

 elephants yearly ; from 1888 to 1902 it took 3,212,700 kilos 

 of ivory, each tusk weighing on an average about 8^ kilos ; 

 nearly the whole was taken from the Congo district. It 

 is just the same with regard to the other ivory-markets 

 in the world, and the above figures give a very true, if 

 sad, picture of the destruction of the noble animal. Soon, 

 when the elephants are all destroyed, dealers will put 

 up prices, and then ivory will become an article of fashion, 

 obtainable only at a fancy figure. 



All these elephants are killed merely on account of 

 their ivory. It does not say much for the highly developed 

 science of our .day that it has not been able to produce 

 a substitute. Fortunately the Indian elephant has a 

 happier fate in store, for the females carry but little 

 ivory, and even the bulls do not grow very large tusks 

 compared with those of their African cousins. The female 

 elephants in Africa have tusks weighing from 10 Ib. 

 to 30 Ib. each sometimes, but very seldom, as much as 

 40 Ib. The males have extraordinarily large tusks. But 

 they vary very much in size, and an average of about 

 half a hundredweight would come near the truth. At 

 any rate, the English officers in British East Africa 

 considered a tusk weighing one and a half hundredweight 

 a suitable \vedding-present for the Prince of Wales. 



This was far from being a record weight. In 1898 

 some native hunters shot a very old bull with tusks weigh- 

 ing together mere than 450 Ib. Both tusks were for sale in 



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