52 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



sary to use many inferior skins, such as rabbit and the like. Methods 

 have been developed of so dressing and dyeing them that they present 

 a much better appearance and are more serviceable than when used in 

 their natural condition. Their sale and use is quite justifiable, providing 

 the purchaser understands just what he is buying and its real value, and 

 is not deceived by the trade name. Almost anyone wearing a coat of 

 inferior fur would rather have it called by another name that would 

 indicate to his friends that it is not inferior, but calling rabbit skin 

 "polar seal" will not make it wear like seal. Honest dealers always tell 

 their customers just what they are offering, if they themselves know, 

 but there are less scrupulous, as well as some honest, but ignorant, 

 dealers who simply use the trade names and let it go it that. With the 

 present great demand, many department and general clothing stores 

 have put in fur-goods departments in which the clerks are inexpert in 

 this line of merchandise. They may be selling inferior goods in perfect 

 good faith, in reliance upon the plain implications of the trade names, 

 of the real meaning of which they are ignorant. Following is a partial 

 list of such trade names, with their real equivalents, prepared by the 

 United States Biological Survey: 4 



Trade Name Real Name of Animal 



Adelaide chinchilla Australian opossum 



Alaska bear Raccoon (dark pelts) 



Alaska sable Raccoon (dark pelts) ; skunk (natural black or 



dyed) 



Aleutian seal Muskrat (plucked and dyed) 



American seal Rabbit (plucked and dyed) 



Arctic seal Rabbit (plucked and dyed) 



Astrakan, Astrachan Persian lamb (loose curl) 



Australian fisher Wallaby (sheared and dyed) 



Baltic fox Northern hare 



Baltic seal Rabbit (clipped and dyed) 



Bear Goat (dyed) 



Beaver Coypu rat (plucked natural) , or opossum (sheared 



and dyed) 



Black furs Black cat 



Black lynx Northern hare (dyed) 



Black marten Skunk (dyed or natural black) 



Black Japanese wolf Goat (dyed) 



Brazilian mink Marmot (blended) 



4 Ashbrook, Trade names in the fur industry, Journ. Mammalogy, iv, 216-220, 1923. 

 Many other, but less-used names are contained in a pamphlet by George W. Pauli, dis- 

 tributed by Jonas Bros., of Denver. See also Jones, Fur farming in Canada, pp. 7-8, 

 1013. Laut has an interesting chapter on "False furs and false trade names" in The 

 fur trade of America, pp. 42-49, 1921. See also Arnold, Dictionary of fur names, The 

 Fur Journal, I, 42-48, 1927. 



