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FACTS ABOUT F URS.
St. Paul, 114mm, Is the Leading City
! mthe Business.
The "Best Furs Come from the North-
western States—Many of ,the Fur-
Bearlng Animals Have Been A1-
most Totally Exterminator}.
Perhaps increduli ty 11 ill sit in the
less a fact that. in St. Paul every year
them are upw ard of 225,000 dogs out up
for the manufacture of fur coats. In
the last year or two there has been a
scarc1ty of dogs, and the prices natural—
ly hav e adv anced. The dogs come from
China, and are that peculiar animal
with the black mouth and black tongue.
They are a queer animal, and are known
in China by the name of “the monks.”
Nobody is prepared to believe, per-
haps, that. in this city annually about
45 0, 000 coonskins are cut up and made
into coats, but it is true for we ha1 e the
word of a- prominent fur man who deals
extensively in all 1:1 inds of skins, frOm
the skunk to the sea In 1893 his rm
cut up 163, 01,0 coonskins alone, and w ill
keep it up so long as the animals exist.
There are certain animals that 11..- 1e
survived civilization, -%, for instance,
the skunk, the raccoon and the opos-
sum, while the wolf. the bear and ani-
mals of their nature have almost en-
tirely disappeared. -
In Louisville there lives an old fur
1 b 1.1 e1 by the name of John White, 11110
has follow ed ‘ h a business of buying and
selling furs for the past 50 years. When
asked a. short time ago by a St. Paul fur
man what difference he noticed in the
business now from the first time he
went into it‘, White replied that the
people are getting more coons, opos-
sums and skunks now than ever before,
proving conclusively that these animals
are not affected by civilization, and go
ahead multiplying without stint.
The vast majority of the otter, beaver,
mink and other skins of that ilk are
captured in the northwest, throughout
Manitoba and the northwestern states.
The wombat of Australia was for many
years a drug on the market,‘and dealers
found it impossible to dispose of them
until t‘ 1e coat manufacturers of St.
Paul took them up. They were found
very excellent for the purpose of coat-
making, and the hunters who had pre-
viously become discouraged and refused
to kill any more found their occupa-
tion renewed and profitable. In the last
two years the. stock has been cleaned
out, the wombat has become scarce and
the prices have advanced proportionate-
ly. Everything seems to be declining in
quantity but. the raccoon, the skunk
and'the Chinese dog or monk, and these
constitute the bulk of furs from which
the coats are manufactured to-day.
The bulfa lo coat at one time 11 as the
most popular of them all, and it was the
prevalence of the buffalo that ga1c St.
Paul such a stint in the industry of fur
coatmaking. At- the time the buffalo
were plenty on the western plains fully
'90 per cent. of the fur coats manufac-
tured were made of buffalo skins. It
was a great industry, not alone for the
Indian, but the white hunter, who
flocked to the buffalo swamps by the
hundreds. The decline of the buffalo
was so rapid as to almost exceed belief.
When the industry first started the
plains fairly swarmed 1 ith the animal
and it 1'. as the easiest thing' in the world
to kill all that 11 ere desired, but in three
years this noble animal was almost en-
tire] y extinct. When the Northern Pa-
cific road was put through to Miles
City, Mont, in 1883, there new 225, 000
or 250,000 buffalo hides shipped out of
that to11n That 11 as in 1883 alone.
All that number had been killed by
white hunters, while the Indian collec-
tion amounted to 20,000. The Indians,
of com so, 11 ere not possessed of the im~
proved firearms and other methods of:
destroying the 1estless creatures, and
that accounts £01 the size of their col-
lection. So that in 1883 the collection,
all told, amounted to about 270,000 hides
and robes.
In 1884 there were not over 20,000 col-
lected by the Indians and white hunt-
ers, and in 1885 there were less than
5,000. In 1886 there were none, and now
the only buffalo that exist are the prop-
erty of the government and live under
its protection in the Yellowstone park.
Previous to 1883 all the southern herds
were killed off, then the northern herds
were attacked, and they disappeared,
it seemed, in the twinkling of an eye.
One fur that is not used extensively
in St. Paul is the seal, although a great
many ladies’ garments, coats, mufis and
the like are made from this most desir-
able of furs. Strange to say, every seal
that is captured in Canadian or Ameri-
can w aters must be shipped to London,~
England, for dressmrr and dyeing. They"
are then returned to the United States
and made up. Naturally, all this trans-
portation adds to the cost of the gar-
ment, and that explains why seal is so
much higher than the other furs. Raw
skins, of course, have no duty on them,
and most other skins can be made up
in this country, but all efforts to dress
and dye the seal successfully in this
country have failed—St. Paul Dispatch.
Doctors Starving in France.
In the British Medical Journal a
Paris correspondent says at least 2,500
physicians in France are battling with
star1ation, and he adds that phy sicia as
themselves are largely responsible fox
this state of affairs. They “have taught-
lady patrouesscs, of different societies
to diagnose diseases, to dress and band—
age wounds, to 1accinatc their own
children and those of their neighbors.
Medical science is 1ulgarized in every
way. Doctors write to important daily
papers explaining how bronchitis and
cramps of the stomach are to be cured,
and in fashion joui nals they teach how
to cure pimples and avert headac11es.
Fiv e hundred thousand gratuitous cou-
sultations are given yearly in Paris dis.
pensaries, and in this way a large
amount of fees is diverted from the
meldical profession. ” —- Chicago Jour-
na
' 1
c1, es of the readers, but it is neverthe- ’
SClENCE AN D INDUSTRY.
- -—Perfumes are now extensively mau-
ufacturcd in the United States, and the
native articles are said by experts to
compare favorably with foreign manu-
factures.
—England manufactures perfumes
011 a very large scale,importin'g many of
the materials ' from other countries,
but also making large use of home-
grown herbs and flowers.
—Many woods have sugar and gum in
their composition, and the presence of ,
these elements is generally shown by
the attraction the wood seems to have
for many kinds of insects.
———The wheat yield in the Genesee
valley, Idaho, this season is immense.W.
N. Gibb thrashed 9,000 bushels off of 200
acres, averaging about 45 bushels to the
acre. Dan Healy cut and thrashed 14
acres of wheat that went 52 bushels to
the acre.
—A Missouri rattlesnake at the mu-
seum of comparative zoology at Cam-
bridge has been observed to lose his
skin twice a. year and to add a. rattle
for every skin. Instead of losing the
rattles as he does the skin, they are re—
tained by the closing of the inner end
of the old rattle over the knob‘of the
new one, and accidentshccepted, the
snake bears with him this record of his
age.
——The trade in California sweet wines
is showing a gratifying increase. ' The
total estimated product for this year is
3,000,000 gallons, which is 25 per cent.
more than was marketed last year.
Heretofore there has been little profit
in the vintages because of the fierce com-
petition of growers, but the producers
have now made arrangements with a
sweet-wine syndicate which will con-
trol the entire product of the state and
give all concerned some share in the
profit.
—In America it has been observed
that bees often bore tubular corollas in
order to get at the nectar of flowers, in-
stead of entering by the mouth, as
humblebces do in Europe. In essays on
the crossfertilization of flowers, this
supposed anomaly has been the subject
of much comment. It now appears that
the humblebees of Europe and America
have identical habits in regard to the
manner in which visits to flowers are
made, and that it is the class of insects
known as the carpenter bee, or the
bOIer, w hich works in the outside man-
ner indicated.
—-The question of the influence of the
size of seeds upong germination and up-
on the size ofythe plants that spring
therefrom has recently
anew by Mr. B. R. Galloway, a summary
of whose conclusions is given by the
Gardeners"Chronicle. The weight and
size of the seed are of great importance.
A large seed germinates better and more
quickly, and with it-one can count upon“
having at the same moment from 85 to
00 per cent. of the total crop,while with
small seeds the crop reaches maturity
only in successiv’e periods of time, so
that at no moment in gathering the
crop in toto could we have the same
proportion of the whole. Besides,
where with small seeds four successive
crops are obtained, we have six with
large seeds, their evolution oceurring
with greater rapidity.
A Curlons Funeral Rita Which Obtained
in Wales.
The principality of Wales has within
living memory possessed an official
known as the “sin- eater.” It was the
practice for a relative—usually a w 0111
an—to put on the breast of a deceased
person a quantity of bread and cheese
and beer, and the sin- -eater was sent for
to consume them and to pronounce the
everlasting rest of the departed. It was
THE SIN-EATER.
'believed that in doing this he absolutely
ate and appropriated to himself the sins
symbolized by the '1'iands, and thereby
prevented their disturbing the repose of
the sinner, who had committed them.
Such an arrangement would obviously
leave nothing to be desired on the one
side, but how it worked on the other we
are not told. What was supposed to be
the condition of this spiritual under-
taker after the ceremony Was con-
cluded? Did his “appropriation” of the,
dead man’s sins imply a sort of moral as-
similation of them, answering to his
physical assimilation of the bread and
cheese? The question would obviously
be one of some importance to a sin-eater
in large practice. If the responsibili:
ties of his profcsion were as great as
ties of his profession were as great as
hypothesis, he would need to retire
from it early, and to devote a. consider-
able portion of his closing years to re-
pentance and good works.
Again, it is natal al to ask what hap-
pened at the decease of a popular or
“fashionable” sin- -.eater 11 ould any-
one among his professional brethren
undertake to eat his sins, even in the
first flush of satisfaction produced by
stepping into his shoes? If so, then,
indeed, has the epithet of “gallant”
been rightly bestowed upon little Wales.
It is as though one doctor succeeding to
another’s practice should consent to as-
sume the moral responsibility for his
late colleague’s treatment of all his de-
ceased patients, in addition to his own
similar burdens.
lVe yield to none in admiration of the
quiet and homely heroism of the medi-
cal profession, but we doubt whether it
would enable them to face such an or-
deal as this. As to the Welsh practi-
tioners to whom we have compared
them, we shrink from pursuing the an-
alysis further. It is evident that, as in
the schoolboy game of “conquerors,”
where'a stone which can smash the
smasher, of, say, 43 other stones takes
over all its conquests, and becomes it-
self a “forty-fourer,” so the responsibil-
ities of these unhappy men might ac-
cumulateat an alarming rate. One
hardly dares to contemplate the inter-
nal cendition of the sin-eater who had in
life attended a long Seriesof other sin-
eaters. The cheese would be almost
converted into Welsh rabbit before he
had got it down—London Times.
'\ ‘_..
been studied '
The Gemblnation
Bay State Hot ’Water and Hot Air Heater has
many advantages. ,From it you get indirect
radiation, which is greatly to be preferred to
direct hot-water heating. The hot-water heater
simply warms the air over and over without any
provision for ventilation. The Combination.
Bay State receives fresh air from the outside
constantly, heats it and drives it all over the
house. You should appre-
eiate the value of indirect
radiation. We can tell you
all about it if you write us.
Consult your
local dealer.
{BARSTOW STOVE CO.
228 Water m8" New York
Foundries—Providence, R. 1.
Boston Ofice-sé Union St.
1
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MANUFACTURERS.
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THE STOCK
HARTFBRD BICYCLES
$645 $50, $45
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POPE MFG. CO., Hartford, Conn.
Branch Stores and Agencies, in almost every city and town. If Columbias are not properly
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Factory:
7481 ' BRIGGS AVENUE.
EBOGKLYM.
161
p
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Women’s Bolumbias
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TO ALL.
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Norwalk Chronicler