Popular Science Monthly 



395 



The picture at the left shows the boys skinning a muskrat. The skin must be removed whole, 

 without cutting. At the right the boys are stretching and tacking two new skins to the boards 



is generally alive. Often, though, the rising 

 tide has drowned him. But if he is alive, 

 he is speedily dispatched by a blow on the 

 head from a stick in the hands of one of the 

 young trappers. This blow must be 

 delivered in a certain spot, so as to kill the 

 rat quickly, and without soiling or in any 

 way injuring the fur. 



When the day's bag has been collected, It 

 is brought home and skinned. Skinning a 

 muskrat requires skill. When the rats 

 have been skinned, the pelts are drawn 

 (inside out) over a pointed board or 

 stretcher. They are then stored in a barn 

 or other place that is dry and well-ventil- 

 ated by a current of air. At the end of 

 two weeks the skins are sufficiently dried. 

 They are then laid aside. When a sufficient 

 number of pelts have been collected, Freet 

 brings them over to the fur market on 

 West 13th Street, New York city, where he 

 receives forty-five cents each for them. 



The season opens on November ist, 

 and closes on April ist. As the season 

 gets older, the skins become more valuable, 

 until, toward the end of the season, they 

 are worth seventy-five cents each. 



Just prior to the Christmas holidays, 

 these boys had collected and sold forty- 



eight pelts. With the money resulting from 

 the sale of these pelts, they treated them- 

 selves to a few things they needed and 

 bought Christmas presents. Then they 

 returned to Hackensack to renew the cam- 

 paign and to collect more skins, for which 

 they will purchase what they WcUit for the 

 summer. 



The Latest Kind of Artificial Feet 

 Are Made of Paper Pulp 



IN spite of the fact that there Is little 

 fiction in the stories of the soaring price 

 of paper, the uses to which this product is 

 being put are constantly increasing in 

 number. We have paper furniture, paper 

 cloth, paper silks and clothes, and even 

 paper legs. 



Now Dr. Svindt, of Denmark, who is 

 responsible for the artificial leg of papier 

 m^ch6, has brought forward a paper foot, 

 intended to meet the needs of the crippled 

 soldiers. These feet are said to be strong 

 enough to withstand ordinary usage, and 

 they have the added advantage of being 

 cheap. A model of the foot is made of 

 wire gauze, and upon this is poured a 

 specially prepared pulp which entirely fills 

 the interstices of the wire gauze. 



