ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 31 
THE COMMON MUSKRAT \ 
| NW. 
A pillar of the fur trade now furnishing the best imitation of more valuable fur, and sold under eat 3 hi, 
: ei (9) 
much-too-heavy overcoat made of 200 wild ani- 
mal skins causing the arrest of a truck driver 
for driving a horse with a lame shoulder. ‘Thus 
is the jewel of consistency displayed upon the 
human breast. 
For half a century, men with seeing eyes and 
thinking brains have noted the steady disappear- 
ance of the best fur-bearing mammals before the 
combined demands of the trapper, the dealer and 
the wearer. Ten years ago we directed attention 
to this line of destruction. (‘Vanishing Wild 
Life’: Destruction of Animals for Fur. p. 193.) 
Two long lists of the annual fur sales of Lamp- 
son & Company, London, for 1911 and 1912 
were published to show two things: the enormous 
number and variety of animals killed for their 
fur, and the great decline in the supply in one 
year. 
In 1911 Lampson & Co. of London sold 
3,460,764 muskrat skins. 
In the London winter fur sale of January, 
1920, all the London fur houses combined could 
muster only 333,500 muskrat skins, which rep- 
resents a proportionate falling off since 1911 of 
90 per cent. In other words, Lampson & Co. 
alone handled in the first quarter of 1911 a total 
of 865,000 muskrats, whereas in 1920 all the 
London dealers together could muster for the 
winter sale only 333,500, which was an exceed- 
ingly small number. 
In January, 1920, it looked as if the last act 
of the tragedy had been staged. It came upon 
the world like the rush of a cheap modern melo- 
drama that assumes merit in whirlwind rapidity 
‘ 
of action, regardless of sense. During the first 
two years of the war, with Russia, Germany and 
Austria conspicuously out of the fur market as 
competing buyers, and England in much the 
same position, the bottom of the fur market 
almost dropped out. Some trappers actually 
ceased trapping because prices were too low 
to make it profitable. 
But war profiteering and an orgy of extrava- 
gant fur buying in America presently changed 
the whole aspect of the fur trade. The soaring 
prices of labor and all products of labor in 
America created a tremendous wave of sill-shirt 
extravagance and of new desire for extravagant 
apparel, which quickly developed a new and 
clamorous demand for furs, regardless of price or 
quality. It reached a point where to every woman 
in America a “piece of fur” became the one indis- 
pensable badge of respectability. All fur prices 
went soaring to heights never before dreamed 
of, with insatiable demands for ‘“‘more.’’ We saw 
prices doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and even 
worse. The raw muskrat skin of our boyhood 
which brought ten cents ‘“‘at the store’ and 
more recently fetched 25 cents, has been selling 
in the country stores of Illinois at an aver- 
age of $2.35 and at auction in New York 
as high as $4 and $5! We have already referred 
to the drop in the supply of muskrat skins in 
the London fur market from 3,460,764 in the 
year 1911 to a paltry 333,500 for the winter of 
1920, a decrease of about 90 per cent in nine 
years. Is it any cause for wonder that now the 
whole United States and Canada are being 
combed with fine-toothed combs for muskrats? 
