WHERE THE WORLD'S FURS ARE SOLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 395, 21 May 1910, Page 9

WHERE THE WORLD'S FURS ARE SOLD.

. "Into College Hill sale-room, Queen street, and the adjoining /warehouse of Messrs Lampson," says the Times, "are poured the spoils of the hunters and trappers 'of every region of the earth, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn and Australia. In room after room they are piled in crates or hanging in masses from stands, awaiting the inspection of the .buyers, ; who at side desks are handling the bundles of a score which represent laaige lots to he sold at the auction. It is the task of Messrs Lamps on's sorters to arrange the lots according to their quality, and out of each to choose a score of sample skina wiioh shall faithfully represent the. general quality of the whole.

'■' To London the Russian comes to buy the best Siberian saJbles, and the American to fetch (home the furs of his own continent, which, viewed from this corner of London, .would seem notably the Land of Foxes, Silver, Arctic, blue, red, cross foxes—one hardly supposed the roundi world contained such a multitude. Yet even the silver fox, the supremely valuable, contrives not to he extinct, for Reynard, whatever ihis color, is still Reynard, and sleeps witih one eye open.

"Here hang side by side two skins, destined to fetch, one £SOO, the other £470, in the open market. They are a brownish black, the large bushy brushes tipped with white. The one which fetches the lower prices seems the handsomer of the two, tot it has a few white hairs in it, and the value of the skin depends on the absence of these. Such little foxes must spoil many vineyards, for by the time this £SOO skin reaches ita destined wearer it will be worth £800: and it would take two skins to make a stole. The color fades in the' wearing, so that this costly fur will very shortly be worth only a third of its present value. Vanity! thy name is really man. For, truth to tell," it is only in a country where the magnificence of women's clothes flatters a man's selfesteem that colossal sums will be spent on them. An Englishman may often he vain of his horse's coat, but he is seldom vain of .his wife's clothes. Accordingly, Paris takes both these skins. It is there that the finest furs usually go. The Russians, fur-lovers for practical reasons, alone compete for them with the French.

"There, iseated 5n three blocks or standing at the edge of the congregation, are buyers from many lands— France, Russia, Germany, Spain, Norway, America. But tlhe flat-iron of cosmopolitanism, if only in the hand of the tailor, has been passed over the surface of the civilised world, and there is little of that picturesque diversity of exterior whicih would have been seen here thirty years ago.

"Tliis sale-room seems singularly devoid of excitement, even when the great furriers of the continents are disputing some noble spoil. The gesture of the bidder Is difficult to detect, for he visiles, to keep ihis purchases a secret from competitors. But all the while 800,000 skin«! and very large sums of money are changing hands; and outside the sale-room the cases of skins are pouring in and pouring out, and a crowd of sorters, [packers, workmen of all sorts a.re ! swarming at their labors. This is London—a very small comer of London—'a little world,' yet the heart of a wide ■world, and containing enough in itself to stir the imagination of the dullard and to give the wild-cat politician pause."