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Show DEMAND FOR HIPPO TEETH Buyers Flock to Antwerp Four Time a Year to Attend Auction Where They Are Sold. T,he chief Ivory market of the world Is in Antvrerp, wnere Diiyers li-om everywhere assemble four times a year to attend an auction of this material. Most of It consists of the tusks of African elephants, but considerable quantities of hippopotamus teeth also figure in the sales. The latter, at an auction a few weeks ago, brought prices all the way from thirty-five cents to $5 a pound, according to quality. quali-ty. A century ago hippopotamus ivory was much more valuable than It Is today, to-day, because it was the preferred material ma-terial for artificial human teeth, being very dense njid hard. George Washington Wash-ington had a set of teeth made of it. 1 But nowadays much better ones are manufactured of porcelain by the million. mil-lion. At the recent auction above mentioned men-tioned rhinoceros tiorns brought $13 a pound. They are Ingeniously carved, mostly for curios. The horn of the rhinoceros, by the way, Is one of the. oddities of nature, being composed of closely compacted hair. |