284 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



this time the bulk of the vegetable ivory of Panama, Co- 

 lombia, and Ecuador had gone to Hamburg to be worked up 

 into buttons by German manufacturers, but the new duty 

 on such buttons served to divert the supply of the raw mate- 

 rial to our ports, as the American button manufacturers 

 were now able to compete successfully with their German 

 rivals. Ecuador is said to furnish the best quality of nuts 

 of the Phytelephas macrocarpa, the "vegetable ivory" of 

 commerce.* 



The specific gravity of vegetable ivory from the tagua 

 nut, popularly called Cabeza de Negro (Negro's head), 

 taken at 10° centigrade, has been given as 1.376, and its 

 constituents are stated to be as follows if 



Gum 6.73 



Legumin, or vegetable casein 3 . 80 



Vegetable albumen . 73 



Ash 0.61 



Water 9.37 



Lignin 81.34 



102.58 



The imports into the United States of vegetable ivory nuts 

 for button manufacture are constantly increasing. The 

 chief sources of supply are, as we have noted, Colombia 

 and Ecuador, the last-named country producing 17,000,000 

 pounds of the 29,000,000 imported in 1913; in 1912 the total 

 import was 23,000,000 pounds; while in 1908 it amounted 

 to but 14,500,000 pounds, showing an increase of 100 per 

 cent, from 1908 to 1913. The following are the principal 

 producing ports of Ecuador for unshelled nuts : Esmeraldas, 

 Manglarato, Bahia, Manta, Cayo, Puerto Bolivar, Macara, 



*Scientific American, Supplement for December 28, 1912, p. 409. 



fArthur Cornell in Phil. Mag., February, 1844, p. 104, as cited in Dingier s Polytech- 

 nisckes Journal, Vol. 92, p. 79, 1844. 



