976 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 19, 1909. 
many of the lot brought low prices on account 
of bad condition. 
Of beaver there were 11,441 skins sold in 
March, at prices that can hardly be called high. 
They run from 9 shillings per skin up to 60 
shillings per skin, but the average is perhaps 
not much over 20 shillings per skin. 
The 1900 lynx skins that were sold brought 
varying prices from 3 shillings up to no shil¬ 
lings. Perhaps the average would not be far 
from 40 shillings, while the 600 wolverine skins, 
except for low grade skins, run from 38 shil¬ 
lings for No. I down to 22 shillings for No. 2. 
Two hundred and sixty-nine skins of sea otter 
were sold, usually singly, rarely in twos and 
threes. This is the fur that is far more valu¬ 
able than gold. The first skin sold brought 
£170, while the forty-third brought £270 and 
the sixty-sixth £380, while lot No. 2044, de¬ 
scribed as “large black,” brought £400. 
Silver fox skin is perhaps more valuable than 
sea otter in proportion to its size and weight. 
Following one another in the list are four No. 
I skins, of which the first brought £310, the 
second £290, the third £210 and the fourth 
£200. They run to all sorts of prices, some¬ 
times only a pound or two, and again up in the 
hundreds of pounds. 
Of the eighty-seven muskox skins ■ sold the 
highest priced brought £21, about $100; the 
cheapest, £7. 
Of the marten skins the most seem to have 
been excellent. One lot ran up to 105 shillings, 
another to 184 shillings, yet there were many 
lots that sold as low as 22, 24 and 30 shil¬ 
lings. The average, however, would be much 
better, we should think, perhaps nearly 40 shil¬ 
lings. 
The more than 431,000 skunk skins are less 
interesting because of their modest price, fitting 
well the humble animal. Some of the lots went 
at 2 shillings 6 pence a skin, some as high as 
10, 12 and IS shillings. 
Bears ranged from 48 shillings to 50 shillings 
for No. I, and down to much lower prices for 
poor skins. One lot sold for no shillings. 
White bears, grizzly bears and red foxes have 
nothing specially interesting about them. Rac¬ 
coons seem to range from i shilling up to 10 
•or II shillings for the very best. Mink on the 
other hand, of which more than 80,000 were 
sold, brought good prices, from 18 shillings to 
34 shillings for No. i, and tailing off from that 
down to as low as 6 shillings or even 3 shillings 
for small poor skins. 
Very high prices were paid for muskrat skins; 
prices which seem remarkable. They ran from 
7 or 8 pence up to 22, 28, 29, 31 and even still 
higher prices. 
From all this it would seem that the trapper 
ought to receive high prices for the fur that 
he sends to market, but it must be remembered 
also that this fur has to go through many hands 
and that each hand takes from it a little profit. 
When these public sales of fur began we do 
not know, but there is in New York city to-day 
a printed form, giving a list of a dozen sorts 
of fur, and describing a sale that was to be held 
in London, England, Aug. 30, 1734. Of course 
the date, prices and so on are filled in with pen 
and ink. 
London, Augt 30^^ —1734 
The Price of Sundry American Goods 
Furs Skins Gfc 
1 . s. d. 
C at per piece 2 6 
Fox Red 3 6 
Grey 2 6 
Raccoon i 7 
Minks I 9 
Martins 3 6 
Otters 5 
Fishers 5 6 
Bears 8 6 
Sever, per lb. 3 6 
Ditto New York 4 
Castorum 3 6 per lb 
Musquash 2 j 4 d 
Wolves 6 6 
Seal I 6 
Dear Skins in Hair 5 
Ditto dress’d 3 per lb 
Even more interesting, because to the average 
man more odd, is a printed paper, dating from 
1821, announcing to all interested that certain 
furs are “for sale by the candle on Wednesday 
and Thursday, March 21st and 22nd.” This phrase 
means that when the furs were put up to be 
auctioned off, a small candle was lighted, and 
while this candle continued to burn, the bidding 
on the furs might continue, but must cease when 
it was burned out; in other words the last bid 
made before the wick of the candle fell over 
would be the one which took the furs. 
A branch of the fur trade which was formerly 
of great economic value, has for the last twenty- 
five years been growing less and less important, 
because of the constant diminution of the ani¬ 
mals which furnished the skins. Less than two 
centuries ago certain lands in the Antarctic and 
the Arctic swarmed with fur seals in such num¬ 
bers that the skins taken were counted by 
millions. There were also a few seal rookeries 
in temperate zones. Almost all of these have 
been put an end to by the selfishness and greed 
of men who cared nothing for the future, so 
long as they themselves might reap a present 
profit. 
Among the lands which formerly teemed with 
seals in the southern seas were Kerguelen land, 
where also sea elephants were found in great 
numbers; the Crozetts not far from there; 
Massaftiero, an island in the South Pacific, said 
to have yielded in a few years 1,200,000 fur seal 
skins, and where it is estimated that when the 
Americans first came in 1797 and began to make 
a business of killing seals, there were 2,000,000 
or 3,000,000 on .the island. The South Shetland 
Islands, nearly south from Cape Horn, became 
known to the seal hunters in 1821-23. Later- 
seals were found on the island of South Georgia, 
in the South Atlantic, and about Cape Horn 
many thousands of seals were taken. There is 
now a rookery on Lobos Island at the mouth 
of the La Plata River. This is owned by the 
Republic of Uruguay and protected. It is per¬ 
haps the only fur seal rookery that is not 
rapidly diminishing. Formerly fur seals were 
abundant on the island of Juan Fernandez, and 
there were some on the Galapagos Islands. 
In the north, the Bering Sea is the, only known 
haunt of the fur seal. Here on the Coman- 
dorski Islands—Copper and Bering Islands-— 
and on Robin Island and on the most famous 
Pribilof Islands, St. Paul and St. George, there 
have been until within a few years great num¬ 
bers of seals. 
Nevertheless, the practice of pelagic sealing, 
so much discussed in recent years, so generally 
acknowledged to be absolutely destructive to 
the fur industry and so apparently impossible 
to control by the efforts of legislators, states¬ 
men and officials generally of the nations in¬ 
terested, is rapidly putting an end to the fur 
seals. A few years ago a hundred thousand 
skins were regularly taken from the Pribilof 
Islands, and the breeding stock of those islands 
was constantly increasing. Now 15,000 skins 
are being produced, and the breeding stock is 
constantly diminishing. Of the seals killed by 
the pelagic sealers a great number are females, 
either carrying their young or with new born 
pups, and the death of each female means the 
death of the pup. 
Volumes have been written pro and con about 
this- miserable destruction of the fur seal, but 
so far as can be seen, the fur seal must join 
that growing procession of species once vastly 
numerous and perhaps on that account the 
more easily exterminated, of which the pas¬ 
senger pigeon, the buffalo and the antelope are 
such familiar examples. 
The history of the fur trade is full of interest, 
and it is to be regretted that it has been touched 
upon only on one or two sides. What appeals 
strongly to the imagination is the fact that of the 
millions of skins sold each year each individual 
one has its own history, has about it some in¬ 
teresting story that might be told; that in connec¬ 
tion with the capture of each skin some human 
being has struggled and labored and hoped and 
feared—perhaps has even gone in danger of his 
life. The romance of the fur trade has not been 
written, nor indeed can it be written; for the 
most of it is long forgotten, yet if all its in¬ 
teresting happenings “should be written, every¬ 
one, I suppose that even the world itself could 
not contain the books that should be written.” 
Indians Exterminating Noose. 
Minneapolis, Minn., June 10 .—Editor Forest 
and Sfrcani: J. Herbert McMillan, of Jenkins, 
Minn., proprietor of a fishing station on White- 
fish Lake, near that place, was in the city to¬ 
day. Fle said that the moose of Minnesota are 
in a fair way of being exterminated by the In¬ 
dians in that section of the country. 
“You can’t keep an Indian from slaughtering 
a moose whenever he gets a chance, and the 
game wardens on that section are having the 
hardest kind of a time controlling them,” he 
said. “The country is so wild and unsettled out 
there that in most instances the offenders escape. 
If this wholesale slaughter goes on, Minnesota 
moose will be a thing of the past.” 
Robert Page Lincoln. 
