FOX PELTS AND THEIR VALUE 183 



to London and Paris and New York, to be even- 

 tually made up and marketed in costly robes. 

 And it may be of interest to here set forth some 

 description of their definitions in the country of 

 their birth. 



There is, as there is a wide range of colour, a 

 wide range of values in fox fur in the raw state 

 in trapping country. A prime black fox pelt may 

 fetch, in accordance to size, 100 to 55, and the 

 all-silver fox 30 to 16. Between those prices 

 are graded the three-quarter-black (three-quarter- 

 neck is the term of the traders), half-black and 

 quarter-black, whose definition of colour I will 

 describe further on. But those are the rare skins ; 

 the typical red, and ordinary Cross fox, are 

 worth about l 6s., the good Cross about 2 8s. 



Pelts are bartered by the Indians for tea, sugar, 

 tobacco, ammunition, clothes, etc., etc., though 

 sometimes a small percentage of the transaction 

 is in cash. All goods that pass in barter are 

 highly priced, for the heavy cost of man-transport 

 over the long difficult trail to the post has to be 

 added, as also have losses en route, and various 

 percentage margins. So that stores that might 

 be bought for 30 at Prince Albert might be valued 

 at say 50 at Fort Du Brochet at the end of a 

 summer's transportation. 



Dealing now with the range of colours : if one 

 said that one Black or Silver Fox was caught in 

 every fifty foxes trapped, one would be some- 

 where near the proportion of their rarity. I have 

 arrived at such a proportion from actual figures 

 of catches in 1913. Estimates many years ago, 

 from one Hudson Bay district, of foxes caught 



