OSBORN AND ANTHONY — CLOSE OP AGE OP MAMMALS 
225 
midsummer purely for ornament and personal adornment, or to make 
a display of wealth and luxury. 
The final cause of the Close of the Age of Mammals can be arrested 
only through the creation of sound sentiment and education of the 
children and of women, in the same manner in which the National 
Association of Audubon Societies has arrested the destruction of birds. 
But such a movement will be extremely difficult, because the fur trade 
all over the world offers opportunities for money making, with very 
little effort and with no risk of life. Boy Chapman Andrews tells 
us that while he was in northern Mongolia word came through that 
marmot skins were coming into the market; the Mongols dropped all 
other work and began destroying marmots. 
The best index to the destruction now going on among the mammals 
is afforded by a glance at the statistics of the fur trade. Anthony 
has compiled the figures for the years of 1919, 1920, and 1921, to show 
the large number of skins sold all over the country at the fur auctions, 
consulting a great number of fur-trade journals and reports. The 
best among these is the Fur Trade Revieio, a large monthly publication 
given over to everything of interest to the fur dealer. In the Fur 
Trade Review one can find a list of all offerings at the different fur auc- 
tions, and it may be assumed that these figures are sufficiently authen- 
tic to be used in this connection. In utilizing data of this nature, 
there are several features to be kept in mind. It is possible that the 
record of skins sold during any one year will not be a true record, inas- 
much as, during a year of high prices, skins may be brought out of 
storage to be marketed under favorable opportunities, and in this way 
a large number sold during one year may have been collected over a 
period of several years. However, as we have had several ‘‘boom” 
years, it is quite likely that all of such stored skins have long since been 
brought out and disposed of, so that the more recent figures probably 
indicate animals killed within the year. Furthermore, lots of skins 
may be sold at the spring auction and shipped to another part of the 
country to be resold in the fall, consequently giving a duplication of 
numbers. In order to discount these figures and to keep them more 
conservative, we have omitted from the 1921 column the auction figures 
for the winter sale. This has, we believe, more than offset any duplica- 
tion which may have occurred. The discounted total of all skins sold 
for the three years reaches the surprisingly large figure of 107,689,927 
skins. Moreover, these figures indicate the slaughter of only the 
animals v/hich reached the market as skins. To properly show the 
