95 
The system which has gone on increasing during the last 
thirty years, of cheapening manufactured articles, is pro- 
bably the cause of the greater demand for small tusks, which 
sell at a lower rate than the larger kinds. There is no way 
of reducing, to any extent, the cost of articles in ivory, except 
by reducing the quantity of ivory they contain. In this way 
the handles of table knives are reduced in length and thick- 
ness until they are mere shadows, and the tang by which the 
blade is fastened into the handle is covered only by a very 
thin skin of ivory, so that a very slight force or accession of 
heat is sufficient to break them. This attenuation of ivory 
handles in table knives is perhaps a cause why Indian ivory 
is more extensively used at present than formerly ; the 
opacity of Indian ivory being so great, that a very thin film 
of it is sufficient to hide the tang of the blade, which, if the 
handle had been made ]of African ivory, might have been 
seen through it. 
A friend of mine, who is a manufacturer in the United 
States, assured me that he had from a house in New York 
no less than eighty dozens of Sheffield-made knives with 
ivory handles, the whole of which were cracked and un- 
saleable, until my friend had re-handled them. On asking 
for an explanation of the cause, I found they had been 
made after the modern fashion — cheap ; the handles had 
been attenuated, and, to effect a still further saving, they 
had been what is technically called " cut crossway," by 
which less waste is made in the ivory. If care had not 
been taken by the workman in making them, they would 
never have reached New York without being, the half 
of them at least, cracked. The additional ten degrees of 
heat of that city, however, accomplished what the care of 
the workman avoided. The cheap handles to which I have 
referred are generally cut from small tusks ; large handles 
cannot be profitably cut from them. 
