PREFACE 



The object of this book is to encourage the man and boy in the 

 country, on whom the future supply of fur depends, to take an in- 

 terest in the small fur bearers that live in his district, and protect 

 them during the summer and during the breeding season, and to only 

 trap and hunt in the Fall and Winter, when the pelts are prime and 

 the fur is valuable. Trapping in season will never deplete the supply 

 of furs. Most of the fur bearers are very prolific and attain maturity 

 quickly and are found in large quantities in nearly every state in the 

 Union. 



The question is often asked "is trapping cruel", and the answer 

 from anyone who knows wild life is unhesitatingly "it is not". Agnes 

 Laut, who is probably one of the best informed women on wild animal 

 life in the country, has pointed out that there is less cruelty in trap- 

 ping than there is in the slaughter house. Anyone need only go into 

 the wilds to at once realize that natural wild life is more cruel by far 

 than the most careless and thoughtless hunter. To begin with 

 there is hardly such a thing as natural death in the wilds. The weak 

 fall victims to the strong. The weasel hunts the rabbit and kills 

 indiscriminately; the fox hunts the weasel and so on through the en- 

 tire list; and if fur bearing animals did not multiply with such ter- 

 rific rapidity they would soon exterminate one another. To give an 

 idea of the rapidity with which wild animals multiply, a number of 

 years ago a settler in Australia, whose home had been in England, 

 decided to have a pair of rabbits sent over to Australia as pets for 

 his children. Previous to this time there were no rabbits in Australia 

 and the rabbit was not a native of the soil. The pair of rabbits 

 which this English immigrant had sent over from the old country was 

 the beginning of the Australian Rabbit. In due time the rabbits 

 had a litter of young. Some of the young were given to neighbors 

 as pets for their children . Finally some of them left the barn yard and 

 took up their home in the wilds. This was the beginning of the wild 

 rabbit in Australia. There was no other wild life to destroy them 

 with the result that they multiplied so rapidly that in a compara- 

 tively short number of years they overran the country. It became 

 necessary for the Australian Government to build hundreds of miles 

 of rabbit-proof fences to protect farms and ranches from their de- 

 predations. Their number ran into the millions and no headway 

 seemed to be made against them. The pest, however, turned out to 

 be a profit for the reason that their fur is valuable, the hair being used 

 in the making of felt, most of our felt hats being made from Australian 

 rabbit skins. The finer grades of skins are used for furriers* purposes 

 for making low-priced furs, and are known in the trade as dyed coney. 



