as no way of finding out in what part of the world her stole
or cap or jacket had origin. On the feet of the sacrificed animal, by
snowshoe of trapper and scow of the trader, it may have travelled half
round the world before, in the shop-window, it tempted her taste and
pocket-book. Furs will be always fashionable; the poet of old who
declared, "I'll rob no ermyn of his dainty skin to make mine own grow
proud," would find scanty following among the women of fashion in this
age.

In some parts of the United States an ingenious by-industry to the
fur-trade has arisen, for the offered-bounty destructive animals are
carefully reared in illicit kindergartens. As some states pay for the
scalps of these animal pests and other states for the tails, the
undertaking is interesting and profitable. The only gamble is in the
nursery. When the gladsome breeder gets his wild-cat or coyote big
enough to market, it is "heads I win, tails you lose." The United
States, in twenty-five years, has paid two and a half millions in wild
animal bounties. California paid in a year and a half $190,000 on
coyotes alone, and no breed of noxious animals is yet extinct.

What is true of the undesirable animals fortunately is true also of the
harmless fur-bearers. Several causes make against the extermination of
these in Canada. The range is so wide that, harassed in one quarter, the
animal may get his family around him and make tracks for safer pastures.
Hunted in the winter only, he has a good six months of planning and
putting into practice plans of preservation as against the six months of
active warfare when the trapper's wits are pitted against his. The
fickleness of Fashion's foibles, too, in his favour. In no line of
personal adornment is there such changing fashion as in furs. A fur
popular this season and last will next spring be unsaleable at half its
original value, and some despised fur comes to the front.

What causes the changed standard? Who shall say? World's Fairs, in
showing perfect specimens, popularise particular skins. Some princess of
the blood or of bullion wears mink at a regal or republican function,
and the trick is turned. The trade-ticker on mink runs skyward and a
wireless thrill of warning should by poetic justice be impelled here to
the shores of the Slave where Mr. and Mrs. Mink and all the little
minxes love and hate and eat and sleep (with one eye open). During the
last five years furs have been increasingly fashion