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very slowly revealed during the next few hundred years. It is much more than probable, therefore, that mammoth ivory will find its way into the world's markets long after the African and Asiatic elephants have vanished from the scene.

It has long been difficult to obtain a reliable account of the mammoth and its ivory. Mr. Bassett Digby's excellent book, "The Mammoth and Mammoth Hunting in North-East Siberia," yields a great deal of valuable information upon the whole history of a deeply interesting subject. He has been over a great deal of mammoth ground and has seen for himself the terribly severe and dangerous conditions under which the industry of ivorygetting is. carried on in these frozen and far-off lands.

There are various theories as to how the vast numbers of mammoths that once wandered over all these regions passed from existence. But up to the present none seem to explain how these great creatures came to be overtaken by a sudden death and their remains frozen in, in a kind of cold storage, for thousands of years. Mr. Digby's theory is that the complete specimens are those of animals which fell into deep snow-covered crevasses and so died and were frozen in. The mammoth roamed the earth during various portions of the Pleistocene period, which it is computed lasted for 400,000 years. It is believed by experts that this period came to an end some 15,000 years ago. These are figures which may well assault the imagination.

Mammoths have been found exposed in glaciers as fresh almost as when they lived and breathed. So fresh, in fact, that bears, wolves, foxes and even human beings were glad to devour their flesh, as it was gradually exposed. Only twenty of these complete specimens have been discovered in Arctic Siberia during the last 200 years, some few of which have been rescued with infinite labour and preserved in museums. The richest district for mammoth ivory known at the present day lies among the Siberian Islands, where huge teeth are raked up from the sandy beaches.

The mammoth stood some 12 or 13ft. at the shoulder and had a thick coat of long dark hair and a dense undercoat of reddishbrown wool, from 9 to 13 inches in thickness. He carried long and often highly curved tusks. Some of those examined by Mr. Bassett Digby in north-east Siberia were between 9ft. 6in. and 1oft. 6in. in length.

A few ran 11ft. and an inch or two.

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One 11-footer in particular,

had a skin of beautifully symmetric grain... it was mahogany in colour, not a crack in it, sound as the tusk of a freshly killed elephant. ... The monster tusk of the lot ran 12ft. 9in. It was bright blue and seemed to be a cow tusk.

The biggest mammoth tusk yet recorded is the left one of a huge pair in the Imperial Academy of Sciences, at Petrograd. The right tusk measures 12ft. 9in. and weighs 166lbs.; the left one 13ft. 7in. and 185lbs. This came from a skull found in the cliff of the Kolyma river, north-east Siberia.

Alaskan mammoth tusks are usually found on the surface and not buried in frozen ground or ice as in Siberia. They are consequently much weathered, blackened, split and so fragile as to break easily into fragments. A pair discovered in 1902, measuring 12ft. in length and weighing 168lbs. and 172lbs. respectively, were, however, in excellent condition, the ivory being perfectly sound and of good quality. These were found in a glacier, where they had evidently been preserved, as it were, in cold storage. We commend Mr. Bassett Digby's lively and very interesting book to all those seeking information upon a curious and little known subject.

Messrs. Hale & Son, the well-known colonial produce and ivory brokers, of 10 Fenchurch Avenue, E.C., who have been kind enough to supply the writer with much valuable information, have written as follows on the subject of Mammoth Ivory :

A parcel, mostly of very good quality, has just passed through our hands, which realised all round £15 to 20 per cwt. A good part of it consisted of large teeth, which were in a very good state of preservation.

The values to-day of Mammoth Ivory vary from 40s. to £60 per cwt. according to the state of preservation. We understand that this ivory comes from Siberia, where it is often dug out of the glaciers or else is found lying about. We believe that the former are those which are in the best state of preservation owing to the fact that they have been sealed from the atmospheric conditions.

The imports of ivory into Great Britain from all parts of the world have, as may be expected from the enormous destruction of elephants during the last sixty years, very sensibly declined; but according to the Board of Trade returns as many as 6,766 cwts. were imported in 1925, and slightly over 7,000 cwts. in each of the two previous years. All things considered, it is amazing that the imports should still amount to such huge figures when one remembers that Africa has been feverishly plundered of its ivory

for the better part of a century and that a considerable export from Africa goes direct to the continent, especially by way of Antwerp. It is, however, to be remembered that London is the world's market for "soft" ivory, the finest and most eagerly sought of all.

The writer has had the privilege of viewing the great London warehouse of Messrs. Hale & Son, and has seen there the amazing store of tusks laid out upon the floors. There they lie, those precious pillars of ivory, in hundreds upon hundreds; solid "scrivelloes " Egyptian and Abyssinian soft teeth; teeth from Ambriz, Zanzibar, Congo, Lagos, Mozambique, East Africa and Siam; those wonderful pieces of ivory, for which so many a great elephant has died and to obtain which what risks, what hardships, what crimes, what tortures and sufferings for many of them were brought to the coast by slavers' caravans have been dared, endured and perpetrated. The floor of such a warehouse is in truth a piece of history, torn from the very bowels of Africa. The feverish quest for ivory is, as we have shown, terribly hard upon the elephant, which, in spite of attempted preservation, still marches steadily towards its doom.

H. A. BRYDEN

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JOURNALISM IN THE DAYS OF THE

COMMONWEALTH

N the history of English journalism during the seventeenth century, the name of John Dillingham occupies a prominent position, yet until The Times a short while ago reprinted one of his articles on "The Last Hours of Charles I," very few people had heard of his name, and probably fewer still of his Newsbooks. Even in the Dictionary of National Biography he fails to find a place, but as a fearless and outspoken critic, and one of the originators of the leading article in English journalism, he certainly deserves a niche.

Of his early years nothing is known, though it is believed that he was the son of Thomas Dillingham, rector of Barnwell All Saints, Northamptonshire, who died in 1618. This belief is supported by the fact that the patron of the living was Lord Montagu of Boughton, to whose family John Dillingham seems to have been a sort of Admirable Crichton, filling the dual role of family tailor and news-writer with equal facility. The earliest mention of him occurs in 1638 as a" tailor "living in Whitefriars,* and early in 1639, when Lord Montagu was summoned to attend the King at York, with six armed horsemen, it was Dillingham who punctiliously insisted on supplying them with red breeches to their buff coats, "because otherwise, being country fellows, they will not be so neatly habited as the other Lords' men.Ӡ

Curious as it may seem, apprenticeship in a cobbler's shop, or any other trade, seems to have been considered a fitting prelude to a journalistic career, and among the writings of his fellow journalists numerous references (not always of a complimentary nature) are to be found to Dillingham's trade. Some idea of his journalistic activities and position may be gained from

Cal. S.P. Dom. 1637-38, p. 591.

↑ Hist. MSS. Com.; Buccleuch MSS. 1, 283.

Among others we may mention that Gilbert Mabbott, journalist and licenser, was a cobbler's son, and Henry Walker an apprentice to an ironmonger.

a reference to one of his contemporaries, the notorious Marchamont Needham, who in 1650, was said to have “grown such a Dillingham, such a Taylour of News."*

The services of the professional writer of letters of news were much sought after during the first half of the seventeenth century, and among the Montagu manuscripts there are two long newsletters from Dillingham, dated 1639 and 1640,† giving a full account of the military affairs on the Continent, similar to the printed "corantos" of the day. In considering the position of "of the news-writer at this period, it is necessary to remember that England was without any printed periodical of domestic intelligence until the end of 1641, and that up to 1648 there was only one post a week.

During the years 1641 and 1642 there is a most interesting series of letters from Dillingham to his friend and patron, Lord Montagu, which are particularly valuable to the historian, revealing as they do the widening breach between Charles and his Parliament on the eve of the Civil War. Writing on November 6, 1641, in reference to the endeavour to remove the King's "evil counsellors," he says:

This week affords great and unexpected news, and such as is like to prove heavy to this Kingdom. To pass by the answers of the Lords to the business chiefly desired by the House of Commons, which if not timely prevented, will sure prove a great distemper in the Kingdom, and my faith tells me will fall heaviest upon them, that against judgment, for self honours and ends, speak for the continuance of that which hath been the cause of so much misery past, and will (if continued) first or last, be the rock upon which our religion and liberties are like to be shipwrecked.‡

The trade of the City was seriously hampered by the growing discontent, so much so, that Dillingham wrote a few weeks later that "the citizens have debated and resolved, in case things take not issue suddenly, to shut up shops and desist trade, which, if three or four hundred should do, all will grow into confusion suddenly. There is now (he significantly added) nothing sought for so much as guns and trimming up of old ones."§

* Williams," Hist. of English Journalism," p. 48n.

+ Hist. Beaulieu, 120-121; 125-126.

MSS. Commission;

↑ Ibid. 132. § Ibid. 139

The

MSS. of Lord Montagu of

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