in a cool place to dry and harden; nothing is added to protect them. Care is taken that they do not heat after packing, and that they are occasionally beaten to destroy worms. A marked exception is the case of the fur-seal, which is best preserved by liberal salting and packing in hogsheads. All other raw furs are marketed in bales.
Few kinds of animals furnish a pelt of suitable weight and pliability, and all of them differ widely in elegance of texture, delicacy of shade, and fineness of over-hair; and these differences determine their place in the catalogue of merchandise. These few animals are not very prolific, and many of them attain their greatest beauty in wild and uncultivated regions, although there are some notable exceptions. Being thus few in kind, and limited in quantity, the extinction of the several choice varieties has been threatened through the persistent energy of trappers.
The principal North American fur-bearing animals are beaver, muskrat, hare, and squirrel; the mink, sable, fisher, ermine, weasel, raccoon, badger, and skunk; the lynx, northern and southern; bears of several kinds; foxes of three or four varieties; two wolves; and most valuable of all, musk-ox, seal, and sea-otter. Of foreign fur-bearing animals the most highly prized are the chinchilla, coypu (nutria), and various monkeys, marsupials (opossum, kangaroo, etc.), and cats. (See articles under their names; also, Fur-Bearing Animals.) Many of the animals, however, enumerated in the American list are also natives of Northern Europe, whence their pelts come to market under other names.
For manufacturing purposes, furs are classified into felted and dressed. Felted furs, such as beaver, nutria, hare, and rabbit, are used for hats and other felted fabrics, in which the hairs or filaments are made so to interlace or entangle as to form a very strong and close plexus. The quality of the fur is better when the skin is taken from the animal in winter than in any other season, giving rise to the distinction between ‘seasoned’ and ‘unseasoned’ skins. The removal of the fur from the pelt is a necessary preliminary to the preparation of fur for felting purposes. The long hairs are cut off by a kind of shears; and the true fur is then removed by the action of a knife, requiring much care in its management. In some sorts of skin the long hairs are removed by pulling instead of shearing; in others, the greasiness of the pelt renders necessary a cleansing process, with the aid of soap and boiling water, before the shearing can be conducted; and in others, both pelt and fur are so full of grease as to require many repetitions of cleansing. For beaver-skins a machine of special construction is employed in cutting the fur from the pelt.
Furs have their felting property sometimes increased by the process of carroting, in which the action of heat is combined with that of sulphuric acid. The chief employment of felted furs is described under Hat Manufacture. See also Felt.
Dressed furs are those to which the art of the furrier is applied for making muffs, boas, and fur trimmings for garments. The fur is not separated from the pelt for these purposes; the two are used together; and the pelt is converted into a kind of leather to fit it for being so employed.
The process of dressing furs, while in its general outlines the same, differs in its details with the character of the fur. The fur of the seal is prepared as follows: The salt used in packing is first thoroughly washed out, and every particle of flesh is carefully removed from the inside of the hide, after which the skins are stretched on frames and slowly dried. The process of thorough washing, this time in soap-suds, is repeated, and while the skin is still moist the long over-hair is removed with a knife, leaving only the short soft fur. This process is a delicate and tedious one. The skin side of the pelts, after being subjected to moist heat, is shaved down until a smooth, even surface is obtained. When the skin is again dry it is placed in a tub filled with fine hardwood sawdust, which absorbs any moisture remaining, and is softened and rendered flexible by treading with the bare feet. It is now ready to be dyed. The coloring matter is applied with a brush to the tips of the fur and distributed by shaking the fur. It is then dried and brushed. The process of dyeing, drying, and brushing is often repeated as many as twelve times.
FUR-BEARING ANIMALS. The group of animals whose pelts are utilized as fur garments or ornaments, forming the carnivorous family Mustelidæ. This family, which includes, besides its typical weasels (Mustelinæ), the skunks (Mephitinæ), the badgers (Melinæ), the otters (Lutrinæ), and the sea-otters (Enhydrinæ), the honey-badgers, ratels, etc., is world-wide in its spread outside of Australia. It is in the Northern Hemisphere, however, that the family is now most numerous and well represented; and it is in response to the demand of the cold winters of the subarctic regions, to which the most valuable of these animals are confined, that their coats have become the warm felts which mankind finds so serviceable and attractive. All are small animals, the largest (the wolverene) being only about three feet long. Their bodies are in most cases slender, their legs rather short, their heads round, with very powerful jaws and teeth, and their tails (except in the skunks) are rather short. Great strength, nimbleness, and courage characterize them, and many exhibit a blood-thirst beyond that of any other carnivore; nevertheless, they have been tamed. Weasels have always acted as mousers in the East, and were so used in ancient Greco-Roman civilization. Ferrets still serve as vermin-catchers, and otters have been taught to fish, while badgers were formerly used in cruel sport. Most of them are terrestrial and live in burrows of their own digging, but some are arboreal. They feed upon small mammals, birds, birds' eggs, fish, crustaceans, and insects; and all possess, in a greater or less degree, anal glands, from which they can discharge at will (sometimes shooting it a long distance) an acrid fluid, which is intensely offensive to the nostrils and mucous membrane of other animals. The chase of the leading members of this family has long been and still is an important industry on the frontiers of Europe and North America, and thousands of pelts have been gathered annually without exterminating any of the race, though the habitats of many species have been much reduced. Statistics of the trade in furs in London show that during the last
