PRECIOUS FURS.
Many animals, to their cost, carry valuable skins ; and a vast number of experiments have been made. Many years ago Mr. Seton Thompson hoped to produce a skunk free from the one drawback to its fine pelt, but found, as he told me, that the gland which produced the strong smell also gave its sheen to the fur. You could not have the one without the other. This is one casual example of many experiments. But practically at the moment only three animals are of any account in the trade : the silver fox, the musk rat (which has had an immense vogue in Austria in the wild as in cap- tivity), and the rabbit. Much the most important is the silver fox ; and this is the animal which is the basis of the new industry of the fur farm. Economically they are im- portant from the happy fact that foxes are perhaps best bred on wilder uplands that are of little use for other purposes. They represent the most intensive, as the deer forest the most extensive, form of animal production. One of the oldest and best is on Dartmoor ; and these foxes would flourish on a great deal of Scottish land over-valued, as things are, at £1 an acre. The speed with which the industry increases, and will increase, and its width of extent may best be indicated by the present nature of the traffic. Though the fox population of North Europe is in thousands, the number of animals killed for their skins is entirely negligible in relation to the general trade. A large proportion of the foxes are bred not directly for their pelts but to sell to prospective fur farmers. Really good foxes, capable of founding a good strain—and strain is not less important than in poultry or race-horses- to-day fetch prices as good as the prizes that set the mouths watering of Canadian trappers. The price of IWO for a good pair is not excessive. Some highly remunerative prices— though of course not more than a tithe of the old—have been earned for. British pelts ; but the industry at present is in large measure a breeder's rather than a farmer's industry- The show points which have been more or less fixed, are discussed with the technical zeal that prevails on all such matters, in the North of England ; and the prize-winners are likely to sell at fancy or at any rate at fanciers' prices. The industry of the present is a rather different thing from the industry of the future. It is at an initial stage, probably prefacing a large and important development. Though the silver fox takes precedence and may continue to be the most valuable, we may safely prophesy that breeding farms for fur-bearing animals are going to be many and various.
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