Fur-Bearing Animals. 227 



ermine and the everywhere detested stoat are one and the same. 

 The stoat, in a warm climate, is a mean-looking reddish weasel-like 

 animal, a little smaller than a cat, avoided by everyone, but in the 

 north his fur becomes the softest and the purest cream white, and 

 the most valuable of all the furs obtained. The change of colour 

 which takes place by exposure to the cold of the ice and snow- 

 bound regions of the north is not accomplished by a gradual substi- 

 tution of white for dark hairs, as was always supposed, but is caused 

 by an actual whitening of the fur. 



The ermine is more or less valuable according to the degree of 

 cold to which it is exposed. An ordinary Toronto winter would not 

 render its fur worth anything, while away up, almost to the arctic 

 circle, where they are often found in great multitudes, their skins 

 are worth fabulous 

 prices. The hairs are 

 of a most delicate 

 cream white when 

 completely bleached 

 by the cold, but the 

 tip of the tail is always 

 black. 



THE ERMINE. 



As may be sup- 

 posed, from the extreme delicacy of the skin and great value of the 

 fur, the capture of the ermine by the Eskimos and Indians of the 

 north is attended with great difficulty. The traps which are used 

 by some for the purpose of catching these little creatures are formed 

 so as to kill them without breaking the skin. A good many are also 

 snared in the ordinary way. One is naturally much astonished at 

 the great value of these little skins, being, according to their size, 

 when caught under proper conditions, worth more than the skin of 

 any other fur-bearing animal in the world. 



The skins of the polar bear and the reindeer — animals that have 

 been fully noticed in a previous chapter — are valuable articles of 

 commerce at the Hudson's Bay posts of the north, and great numbers 

 of them, especially of the latter, are annually exported to England, 

 along with other furs, where they find a ready market. 



