FOX FARMING IN ALASKA 



BY M. L. WASHBURN 



OR many years the world's supply of fine furs 

 has been steadily decreasing. The beautiful 

 sea otter, from the greed of the white hunter 

 with his far-reaching firearms and his still 

 more deadly net, set in the rocky passes 

 through which the otter swims from one feeding ground 

 to another, is practically extinct. The vast herds of fur- 

 seals, by reason of the destructive effects of killing at sea, 

 have so decreased that only small remnants now frequent 

 the rookeries of the Commander and Pribilof Islands. On 

 land the onward march of civilization just as surely pro- 

 claims the early commercial extinction of the silver fox, 

 the blue fox, the American sable, and many less valuable 

 fur-bearing animals. Even today so scarce have these 

 animals become that we find comparatively few of their 

 pelts offered in the markets of the world. Their place is 

 largely taken by inferior skins, colored to imitate the fash- 

 ionable furs of the season, but which change their tint 

 with use until they finally return to the original hue of the 

 creature from which they were taken in most instances 

 the humble rabbit. 



Something like fifteen years ago a few men in western 

 Alaska, realizing that fur-bearing animals were doomed, 



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