Today, in spite of international treaties, there are not 180,000 seals on the islands; and it is doubtful whether more than ten or twelve thousand pelts will come into the market annually during the next few years. It is computed that nearly 20,000 young seals die from starvation every year on the islands because their mothers have been killed off by poachers, who make a dash upon the herds under cover of fog.

There seems to be no end to the interest of this subject. Take the curly glossy Persian lamb, one of the best known of the more costly furs. One great international company have sheep farms of their own at Bokhara, in Central Asia, and also import lambs from Thibet whose skin is noted for being white as snow and fine as silk. Including Shiraz, pure Persian lamb, and Thibet lamb, over a million skins are exported from Central Asia every year to this country and Europe.

INTO LOTS.

on a rocky island off the Labrador coast. No other species exists on the island, yet by a curious atavism the animals continue to produce both red and "cross" puppies, as well as the precious silver, whose pelt may be worth a thousand dollars.

No one yet knows whether the true silver fox-glossy as silk yet springy as wire is a distinct species or a mere freak. Certainly not more than two or three thousand silver fox pelts come on the world's markets yearly. Ordinary foxes, of course, yield one of the biggest of the world's fur crops. In one season there will come on the market 260,000 English foxes; 300,000 Siberian; 625,000 German; 400,000 from Russia in Europe; 120,000 American red foxes, and some 60,000 Alaskan foxes of all varieties.

The demand for skunk skins is quite universal. The pelt itself is deodorized by rolling and trampling in mahogany sawdust. Already the skunk farms of the West have proved profitable experiments, unlike the beaver farming attempted some years back, north of Lake Superior. At least 700,000 skunk skins. come every year from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and the group of Central Northwestern states. As a general rule, however, it may be said that fur farming is a risky business, too often foredoomed to failure.

Fur comes to its greatest excellence only when the animal has an enormous geographical range; and the colder the weather the finer the fur. Chinchilla is the best product of the South American Continent; but nutria is the staple fur of this region. Over 600,000 nutria skins come to New York every year from Brazil alone. It is extremely like a light beaver, and is cleaned by being revolved in saw-dust tanks and tubbed in huge butter vats.

Some experts prefer a first class American marten to any Russian sable, except the most costly. Perhaps the best sable fields are in Kamchatka, Yakutsk in Siberia; and in Northern China. Few people realize that the little sable is barely nine inches long, even including the tail; and brown, dark brown, silver and black are its prevailing colors. Tiny as this creature is, as much as $150 has been paid for one of its little pelts. From this figure the price runs down to a couple of dollars, according to the quality.

Not more than 25,000 black sable skins come into the world's markets in any one year. The ermine is no larger, and is geographically limited to the coldest regions. True, the little fellow is found much further south; but here the ermine is only a vicious yellow little weasel worth less than nothing. The best Russian kinds come from the Yakutsk province of Siberia; and the Mackenzie river district yields the finest ermine on the American continent. For a prime and perfect specimen the trapper will receive four dollars.

Strange to say, a few years ago mink was so unfashionable that the fur went

begging at a few cents a pelt! But there came a time when fashion approved it, and prices soared from two dollars to seven dollars for different qualities. As a result over 700,000 mink are exported from Canada and the United States to European markets.

Our own otter fetches from seven dollars and fifty cents to thirty-five dollars; but specimens from the salt water states of the South rule much lower. Of racoon, over half a million are sent from our Northwestern states to the London market, which handles over $6,000,000 worth of furs every season. Then comes the badger, wolverine, and opossum. In the case of the last named, we send another half million pelts to Europe annually.

Musk-rat, squirrel, and rabbit are sold literally in millions. Australia alone produces over 25,000,000 rabbit skins every year. Rabbit has been called the greatest sinner in all the long list of shoddy imitations; but on the other hand the musk-rat, almost equally plentiful, is an imitation that wears. And some varieties can be dyed to a perfect imitation of marten.

There was a time when London was the fur market of the world, but her supremacy in this respect has passed away. And, unnoted by the public, another industrial leadership has come to the United States; for New York City is now the greatest fur manufacturing center in the world. More than 3,000 establishments for the treatment of fine furs and the making of fur garments are in operation in our largest city, and the value of their annual product exceeds $7,000,000. Experiments by our own chemists within the last twenty years have largely changed the methods. of fur dyeing, and now the skin dressers of New York are recognized as preeminent, especially in the treatment of otter, mink and beaver.

In some of these establishments you will see fur coats more costly in quality than if they were cut from hundreddollar bills! One of the best houses, will show you a silver fox pelt worth $3,000; and it is nothing unusual for a big firm to invest half a million in Russian sables alone.

I

Na mountain side in northern Michigan, there is a hole that strikes down into the ground some three hundred and fifty feet, for the purpose of entrapping a river and. compelling it to do a strange new thing. In an underground chamber at the bottom of this hole, the plunging water once caught is held up and robbed of a very precious possession which it is tricked into bringing down with it, and which, oddly enough, becomes more precious the farther down from the surface it is carried. For the treasure is air, which becomes compressed air, as the river carries it down into the underground chamber, and when it is released in the rocky cavern, cut in the solid heart of the mountain for its purpose, it is under such a pressure that it is ready and eager to act, and so is very valuable indeed for power in the neighboring mines.

The jump which the river makes is not at all spectacular, because it is all hidden inside of great steel tubes, five

feet in diameter and, to be exact, three hundred and forty-three feet long. It does not make a flying start, but flows to its tremendous leap as quietly as any other unsuspicious, untrapped thing might approach a pitfall. But once launched on its downward course, it becomes a subterranean cataract of more than twice Niagara's height. It is no wonder that the air, caught in millions of minute bubbles from the lips of special feed-pipes which touch the flowing stream at the top of its leap, is helpless to escape till the bottom of the plunge is reached, and it finds itself imprisoned in the dark, with escape blocked everywhere by the invincible water, and its freedom only purchasable in exchange for the energy its fall has developed.

It is a wonderful air-compresser that the inventor, H. C. Taylor, has produced and applied to the needs of the Victoria Mine, at Victoria, Michigan, where the air, enslaved by its means runs every machine in the whole great plant. The underground prison for the air is 281 feet long, twenty-six feet high and eighteen feet broad. The intakes, of which there

greater part of the

water is carried away, leads to the surface of the ground at a point lower than the river, SO that the water naturally finds. its way out of the prison by that exit. Four pipes, with mouths under the surface of the water in the cavern, lead to the surface. Three of them small pipes, of two inches diameter, lead each up to a

bell, or section of larger tube telescoped over the head of an intake. When pressure in the air-cham

HEAD OF INTAKE PIPES.

The suction of the water through these tubes draws down myriads of air-bubbles to

the underground cavern.