78 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



the pig, hair seals, porpoises, etc. Many thousands of deer skins' are 

 marketed annually in the United States and used in making buck- 

 skin. Before game laws for Alaska were enacted thousands of deer 

 were killed there for their skins alone. 71 In Texas, from 1844 to 1853, 

 75,000 deer skins were handled at one trading post. 72 Reindeer skins 

 are much used for clothing in Alaska, Labrador and some northern 

 European countries. American bison skins were sold by hundreds of 

 thousands from 1865 to 1885, many of them for a dollar or two each, 

 for robes and other purposes, but they are not now in the market. 

 One railroad handled 1,378,369 in three years, from 1872 to 1874, and 

 75,000 were shipped from Bismarck alone in i88i. 73 The buffalo skins 

 mentioned in recent statistics of imports and exports of various coun- 

 tries are not American bison, but the buffaloes of Asia, Philippines and 

 perhaps Africa. 



The armadillo, an interesting and useful animal, is being rapidly ex- 

 terminated from Texas and northern Mexico for its skin, which is 

 used in the manufacture of ornamental baskets. 74 Marine mammals 

 furnish large quantities of excellent leather. In 1902 the seal leather 

 (not fur seal) production was estimated at $1,500,000 per annum, 

 beluga or white whale (sold as porpoise leather) at $200,000, and 

 tanned walrus leather at $100,000; about 30,000 pounds of tanned 

 walrus hides, worth $25,000, imported to the United States annually; 

 the largest Atlantic Coast catch of porpoises for leather up to that time, 

 20,000 skins in 1887, the green skins then worth $2 a side; manatee 

 and dugong skins also used for leather, but the production too small to 

 be of much consequence. 75 



71 Osgood, The game resources of Alaska, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 1907, 

 p. 478. 



72 Strecker, The trade in deer skins in early Texas, Jonrn. Mammalogy, vin, 106- 

 no, 1927. 



"Nelson, Scientific Monthly, xvi, 369, 1923. Bailey, N. Amer. Fauna, No. 49, 

 p. 22, 1926. 



74 [Jackson], Journ. Mammalogy, x, 89, 1929, criticizing McDaniel, Amer. Forests 

 and Forest Life, xxxv, 44-45, 1929. 



75 Stevenson, Utilization of the skins of aquatic animals, Rept. U. S. Fish Comm. 

 for 1902, pp. 327, 337-340. 



