LONDON FUR SALES.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19893, 23 May 1936, Page 23 (Supplement)

LONDON FUR SALES.

PARIS WANTS MARTEN. NEW YORK PRE‘FERS MUBQUASH. LONDON. April ‘26. The London t‘ur sales of the Hudson's Bay Company start to—morrow. Four times a year the pelts or the world pour into London to be distributed—for London is the centre of the world‘s fur trade. says the special mrrcsprindeut of the Sunday Express. Dealers from Russia. America. Ger—many. Poland. and France, will cram into the auction room in Garlic}; llill, near St. Paul‘s Cathedral. Dealings at these. inarts alone come to about £8.000.000 a year. Add to this almost another £S.OOU,OOO through private dealing. and you have some idea 01' the trapper's treasure. America sends thousands of muskrats to London for the pleasure of buying them back again as musquash. which is more popular on Fifth Avenue than in Bond Street. Ail-Round Killer. Your fashionable Parisienne loves a fisher—a Canadian fur. The fisher is nature‘s idea of the all—round killer. It. is the. king-pin or the marten family. .\ marten can ratrh a squirrel. but :1 [isht’t‘ van eat-ch a marten. it. ran run rionn hares in the open field and hunts the fox like a hound. it. kills deer and even oats porcu—pinrs. it is only two to three feet tour; 1': you want some idea of how the skin (it' an animal ran upprel'iato in \‘alhr‘ in its travels from the trap to the. shop. take. the silver fox. At the beginning at tho i‘f‘niury the silver fm' was snrh a rarity that a good pelt was worth anything up to £3OO in :1 London aurtion, But about 1890 n rouple of Scottish farmers of Prince Edward Island kept a. male and female silver fox in cap—tivity long enouxh to disrover that the silver fox could be bred. They tried to keep their secret, but it spread, until the number of silver fox furs coming to the market at once has grown from 2000 to 300,000. There are more than 5000 silver for farms in Canada now, 3000 in the United States. nearly ‘2OOO in Ger—‘ mama Norway and Sweden. The‘ number in this country is growing every month. But a fur by which you mean anything from a rabbit to a sable—more than trehies its value. in its journey from trapper to rollortor, to dealer and then manufacturer, and tinaily i 0 retailer. (lhicf rentres of the SUDPHE‘S are Canada and itussia. More than half of the annual trade in the London markets is in Canadian furs.

Just as in the time of Fenimore Cooper. the Hudson’s Bay Company collects i'm-s from its 221 trading posts scattered all over Canada. The conmany has svventeen trading posts within the Arctic Circle. Barterlng. _‘ 'i‘ho furthest north is at Pond‘s Tnlvl. when: nomadic tribes of Eski—moes bring in their polls once a year to the m‘uinpany's ship. Barter is still the only method of trading the nvcmgn lnl‘lian or Eskimo is pi‘oflcir‘nt in. But the clays when it was possihln to huy a valuable silver fox pelt for a string: of brads or a rhenp Birmingham mirror arc Hana. Thu nnlivns haw caught up a vouplr- ut‘ storm on r-hilisulinn: flour. l'vnr‘nn, ritlnw. aunl mmnuuiiiun are what. may rlr‘umnd now. ‘ From llnt‘tin‘s Hay in chrschPl lsinnrl tho tl't—lDlK’l‘h' treasure pours into the i'ludson‘s Bay centres. Most of it still names by (10g sledge. Some of it now t'omr‘s by nirplunr’. i It all comes m‘s‘ntually to London.‘ The dealers lnn‘n to know the fur fashions in all the countries for“ which tho)“ buyi fine mun buys for; Italy, another for France, another for‘ Sweden, another for the home trade.l