144 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



striped squirrel, which Muir has described as the happiest, most 

 pleasing denizen of the California Sierras. 



Of squirrels, there are 249 specimens and grades in America. 

 His range is from Athabasca to Florida, and he is a cousin of the 

 whistling marmot, whose pert cry comes up at your feet in the 

 Rockies, and a relative of the gopher squirrel, whose "yip " surrounds 

 you on the prairie. Gray squirrel is always called a natural fur; 

 because like fisher, it defies dyeing. All the squirrel clan, ground, 

 mountain and tree, are noted for living more or less in colonies of 

 from 40 to 1000. All can be tamed into ridiculously intimate human 

 pets, which should protect them from depredation, but it does not. 

 For linings, boas and whole-piece garments, the European trade 

 uses 2,730,826 skins a year; and multiplying the spring sales by 

 three, the American trade must use even more. 



The Japanese Flying Squirrel is used to imitate chinchilla and 

 while trade requirements are given as 20,000 a year, this is ob- 

 viously a wild guess, for in the spring sales only of 1920, almost 

 5000 were sold in New York, 3300 in London, and 10,000 in St. 

 Louis. 



Ermine 



Though the Northern Ermine is a weasel of the most murder- 

 ous, blood-thirsty type, his little pelt ranks with the rare fragile 

 furs. I have described him fully in Part II. To Elliot Coues must 

 be given the credit for the best description of ermine in the fur 

 world. He is a stoat, called by the trapper a weasel, of a dirty 

 brown in summer, and a white pure as snow in winter except for 

 the black tip to his tail, which is the one thing that betrays him to 

 his enemies ; or rather I should say to his victims ; for with his 

 snaky stealth, his trick of approaching bird, or hare, by diving 

 under the snow and coming up with a leap on the brain or heart 

 of his victim, which he kills with one stab of his knitting-needle 

 teeth and at once sucks himself full of the warm blood, he is a vicious 

 little hunter, who has no invulnerable enemy but man. He is five 

 to twelve inches long with a fur tail four inches or longer, and fur 



