TRANSFER FROM EUROPE TO AMERICA 7 



rich, with the fashion for summer furs, with tramp steamers and 

 free hunters owing responsibility to no man penetrating Farthest 

 North and offering crazy Klondike prices to trappers, how long are 

 our furs going to last ? Hasn't the buffalo been practically ex- 

 terminated except for park preserves ? Wasn't the beaver be- 

 coming almost extinct, when the Canadian provinces — especially 

 Quebec and Ontario — clapped on closed seasons some eighteen 

 years ago ? Before the rise of the Bolsheviki, hadn't Russia put a 

 closed season on sable ? Like the buffalo, hasn't sea otter — the 

 most beautiful fur of all peltries — almost vanished ? It used to be 

 taken in the Aleutians in the hundreds of thousands. In the 1920 

 spring fur sales, only three were offered in New York, only fifteen 

 in London, only seven in St. Louis. And before Pelagic Sealing 

 was stopped by International Treaty, wasn't the beautiful Alaska 

 seal going the same way ? Won't the fate of chinchilla and mink 

 and marten and sable be the same ? Isn't the last chapter of the 

 great fur romance being written ? Aren't we reaching the ex- 

 tinction of all game ? 



The very note of pessimism in that question answers itself. 



Beaver have come back. 



Alaska seal has come back. 



Silver fox are more plentiful than ever. 



Buffalo have multiplied from a few hundred in one Canadian 

 park to 5000 in ten years, and if half a dozen sea otters could be 

 captured unharmed alive, there is not the slightest doubt they 

 could be brought back to a plentiful supply. 



And Persian and Astrachan and Krimmer lambs are being bred 

 in America and just beginning to come on the market as fur. 



Skunk has been trapped in America for two hundred years and 

 is more plentiful on the fur market than ever before. 



Rabbits are such a pest in Australia, poison and trap have failed 

 to exterminate them ; and in certain sections they have ruined the 

 pasture. 



Muskrats are coming to the market in millions ; and so prolific 



