94 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



off their hands. "Why should I pay #5 for a skin, which I can't 

 sell at 90^ as fur ?" an old buyer asked me. " If these skins had been 

 taken in winter, they would have been all right ; but they weren't ; 

 and we can use them only for discard and cheap imitations." 



In the last half of the seventeen hundreds, muskrat sold yearly 

 in London less than 75,000 skins. In the first half of the eighteen 

 hundreds, the average went over 400,000. In the last half of the 

 eighteen hundreds, the average jumped two millions and a half 

 yearly. London sales to-day average 7,000,000 a year ; and 

 America's total catch — as told before — 10,000,000. When musk- 

 rat skins went to $1 trappers gasped. When they went to #5 and 

 $7, traders were dumb ; and yet the fine skins were bought at that 

 price by the trade ; and the trade knew what it was doing. The 

 formal processes of dressing muskrat have already been given. 

 The Canadian Conservation Report recommends the following 

 process for home dressing : 



"The skin should always be thoroughly cleaned in warm water 

 and all fat and superfluous flesh removed. It should then be 

 immersed in a solution made of the following ingredients : Five 

 gallons of cold soft water, 5 quarts wheat bran, 1 gill of salt, and 

 1 ounce of sulphuric acid. Allow the skin to soak in the liquid 

 for four or five hours. If the hides have been previously salted, 

 the salt should be excluded from the mixed solution. The skins 

 are now ready for the tanning liquor ; which is made in the following 

 way : Into 5 gallons of warm soft water stir 1 peck of wheat bran 

 and allow the mixture to stand in a warm room until fermentation 

 takes place. Then add 3 pints of salt and stir until it is thoroughly 

 dissolved. A pint of sulphuric acid should then be poured in 

 gradually, after which the liquor is ready. Immerse the skins and 

 let them soak for three or four hours. The process of fleshing 

 follows. This consists of laying the skin, fur side down, over a 

 smooth beam and working over the flesh side with a blunt fleshing 

 tool. An old chopping knife or a tin candlestick forms an excellent 

 substitute for the ordinary fleshing knife, and the process of rub- 



