54 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



Trade Name Real Name of Animal 



Russian otter Muskrat (blended) 



Semeuse seal Rabbit (plucked and dyed) 



Sable Hare, marmot, mink, rabbit or Norwegian fitch 



(dyed) 



Sable fitch , Norwegian fitch (dyed) 



Seal Coypu rat (plucked and dyed) ; otter (plucked and 



dyed) 



Seal musquash Rabbit ( sheared and dyed) 



Sidney raccoon Wallaby (sheared and dyed) 



Skunk Marmot or wallaby (dyed) ; opossum or wallaby 



(sheared and dyed) 



Two L seal Rabbit (plucked and dyed) 



White fox Northern hare 



Wombat Koala 



There is at present a fight in progress against the use of fur garments, 

 partly on humanitarian grounds and partly because the enormous de- 

 struction of wild life in order to obtain the more desirable furs is jeop- 

 ardizing many species of interesting and useful animals, just as the 

 feather trade at one time seriously threatened the existence of many 

 species of birds and actually exterminated some of them. It is true that 

 there is more or less cruelty about the trapping of fur-bearing mam- 

 mals, just as there is about the trapping of rats and of predatory mam- 

 mals that destroy livestock. Unnecessary cruelty should be avoided in 

 all industries and trapping is no exception to the rule, but if everything 

 should be suspended that involves an element of cruelty the habits of 

 the whole human race would have to be very much amended as to food, 

 clothing and in other ways. Sheep sometimes suffer from cold storms 

 after the shearing process and many other necessary operations of men 

 result in unavoidable or not easily avoidable cruelty. Humanitarians 

 are quite within their rights in insisting on the reduction of trapping 

 cruelty to the practical minimum, but this whole subject should be 

 squarely faced in the light of common sense, coupled with lively sym- 

 pathy for the fur-bearing mammals, on the one hand, and due regard 

 for some important facts of commerce and natural history, on the other. 

 A recent symposium in American Game has discussed the proposed 

 anti-steel trap legislation from various points of view. An Anti-Steel 

 Trap League has been organized in the United States for the purpose 

 of outlawing the use of steel traps and other "torturing devices" and 

 several states have enacted laws regulating the use of such traps. Massa- 

 chusetts by a referendum vote of 589,013 to 259,014, on November 

 4, 1930, adopted an anti-steel trap law, according to Nature Magazine, 

 1931, p. 134. 



