XXXI 
IVORY 
403 
In Great Britain the best ivory is used for making 
billiard balls, but the largest tusks are bought for the 
American market. Fifty per cent, of ivory imported 
into America is used for piano keys and in India for 
making bangles. The best tusks fetch in the open 
market £68-£70 per hundredweight. A visit to an 
Iron ball . projecting into the pulp 
chamber of an elephant’s tnsk. 
(Museum of the Royal College of 
Surgeons, England.) 
ivory sale teaches that even chips are too valuable to 
waste, for when calcined in a close vessel they furnish 
charcoal; this, known as ivory black, forms a pigment 
for oil and w^ater-colours, also an ink for printing 
engravings. 
Some notion of the life of an ivory trader, with 
which slave-trading was also combined, may be gathered 
from a perusal of Bode’s Life of Tippoo Tih. When 
this enterprising Arab raided Nsama’s country, among 
D D 2 
