384 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



cause their pelts are not prime, or because in the days and nights of torture 

 in the steel-trap they have so torn themselves as to be worthless for the 

 market. Probably for every marketable pelt, two other animals are killed 

 and left to rot. 



America was first explored by fur traders; their wilderness trails are 

 now our great highways; their far-flung outposts have grown to be our 

 great cities; the romance of their names is written on the map of almost 

 every state. The profit on furs from Louisiana and New France helped 

 to build Versailles. Beaver skins were currency; and these riches fostered 

 the heartless display of the French Court. But the extravagance of the fur 

 trade of those days, when the wealth of the wilderness was barely tapped, 

 was as nothing to the killing of fur-bearers that goes on today. Stand at 

 the door of any fashionable church any Sunday in winter (or even in sum- 

 mer), and count, if you can, the skins of dead animals that come forth into 

 the sunshine, often two hundred or more in one garment, on the backs of 

 the worshippers. When we consider the fur trade, we marvel at the short- 

 sightedness of business men who have so looted their resources. In the 

 United States and Canada few valuable fur-bearers remain. The trade seeks 

 its pelts further and further to the northward; and, unless restrained, its 

 trappers will one day take the last fox that vainly tries to conceal its white- 

 ness against the snow on the polar ice. 



Besides being wasteful, steel-trapping is attended by torturing cruelties. 

 It is universally recognized that the steel-trap, chief implement of the fur 

 hunter, causes intense and long-drawn-out suffering to its intended victims, 

 and is besides a menace to small domestic animals. Dogs often get into steel- 

 traps, and lose a foot, or leg; a case is on record of a dog remaining in a trap 

 fifty-five days; in which time hunger, thirst, starvation and torture reduced 

 its weight from sixty-five to fifteen pounds. Put the trapper in a bear trap 

 and leave him there a week, and he will have a greater appreciation of what 

 he is doing. To leave traps uninspected, certainly longer than twenty- 

 four hours, should be an offense subject to severe punishment. The man 

 who will set a trap and leave it unvisited for a long period, or worse, even 

 forget about it entirely, is too irresponsible to be allowed to trap at all. . 



The fur trade and its allies, the manufacturers of steel-traps, cannot plead 

 ignorance of the situation. By the trappers' and furriers' own admission, 

 the American fur crop is only about 50 per cent, of what it was some twenty 

 years ago — and everyone knows it had vastly decreased even then. The 

 Department of Agriculture has warned us that even "the remnants of our 

 rich fur resources are fast dwindling," a report of the Bureau of Biological 

 Survey states: "The annual turnover in the retail fur trade has shrunk from 

 $5,000,000 in 1929 to $1,500,000 the past year.* " Take the muskrat, for 

 instance. It was once so plentiful, and is so prolific that the supply was 

 thought to be inexhaustible. The muskrat is Louisiana's chief fur resource, 



• 1935.— Ed. 



