FOREWORD xi 



son's Bay men, Colonel Cornwall, the free trader of Edmonton, 

 Revillons of Paris ; such buyers as Gottlieb, or Funstens of St. 

 Louis, and a dozen others ; the dye chapters practically in some of 

 the big dye works ; though I have consulted such authorities as 

 Hornaday on natural life, and Elliot on seals, and followed Brass 

 as to totals, and checked Brass' totals with the sales record of Lon- 

 don fur brokers for a hundred years ; and though I spent six months 

 going over line by line all the Minutes of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany from 1871 — only the most ignorant quack would aver that 

 the fur figures available to-day could be correct. 



The reason for this is self-evident. When prices drop, or the 

 whim of fashion shifts, furs shipped this year may be withheld from 

 the market and not sold for four years, when they will be sold as 

 the output of that year ; and the practice works the other way as 

 well. When prices jump, furs stored for years come out of storage 

 and are sold. There is no way of checking what furs come from 

 what centres. Undressed furs are free of duty as they should be. 

 The trapper may post them from Athabasca to St. Louis, or from 

 Wisconsin to Montreal. Northern furs always sell at highest prices, 

 other things being equal. A little local buyer, or agent, may post 

 those furs so received by mail as from one trapping field when they 

 are from another ; and buyers may declare they know a skin's habi- 

 tat from a life experience in buying. They may in many cases ; 

 but only this year, it was found 12 million pounds of rabbit from 

 Australia were sold as Canadian, when they had come in by Van- 

 couver. I defy you to tell an Alaskan mink from a British Colum- 

 bia mink, or a Prince Edward Island silver fox from a Labrador or 

 Athabasca one. Game laws, wardens' stamps, breeders' trade 

 marks are correcting all this ; but to the present, the confusion dis- 

 counts any dependence on figures. 



Also the shift of animal life defies scientific tabulation. Ten 

 years ago, I prepared a fur-trade map on America for a leading 

 magazine. We made it as accurate as it could be made from Bio- 

 logical Reports from Washington and Government Reports and 



