With silver fox the underwood is close and fine. The top hair, black to silvery in colour, should be about three inches long. The neck fur usually runs dark, almost black, and in some cases the fur black halfway down the length of the skin, in rarer cases three-quarters of the length and, in exceptional cases, the whole length and when this is the case they are known as "natural black foxes" and fetch enormous prices. The brush of the silver fox has invariably a white tip.
The Canadian white fox is silky and inclined to a creamy colour, while the Siberian is more woolly and rather whiter. The underwood in all white foxes is generally of a bluish-grey tone, but the top hair in the depth of winter is usually full enough in quantity to hide any such variation. The skins in which the under-wool is quite white are rare and much more expensive.
Kolinsky is of the marten tribe. The underwood is short and rather weak, but regular, as is also the top hair. The natural colour is usually yellow, but it is successfully dyed and used as a substitute for sable.
Lambs Of The Medes And Persians The lambs include Persian lamb, broadtail, astrakhan and caracul, and of them Persian lamb is the finest and best Originally the skins are of a rusty black or brown and with very few exceptions are dyed a jet black, Lustre, however, cannot be imparted unless the wool was originally of a silky nature. The curls should be of equal size, regularity, tightness and brightness, and they vary in different skins from small curls to very large ones.
Broadtails are the very young of the Persian sheep, and are killed before the wool has time to develop beyond the flat wavy state which is rather like a piece of moire silk. They are naturally light in weight and should be of an even pattern lustrous. Broadtail is so flat in the col that it can be cut as perfectly as silk, but it is a rather delicate fur.
Caracul is the very young of the astrakhan sheep and the pick of them are nearly as effective as broadtails, though less finely textured. The best grey "crime mer" lambs are pale bluish grey. In the Chinese shops one occasionally discovers a slink lamb cross. These are. generally stillborn and have a particularly thin pelt with a very close wool of minute curl.
Some Faultless Favourites For a warm, durable and not too heavy coat, musquash is good. It should have a fairly thick and even brown underwood and rather strong top dark hair of medium density. As it is impossible to disguise the joins in musquash skins this fur can only be used for coats, otherwise it would be largely in demand for stoles, ties and muffs, and the square skins are pleasantly characteristic of it.
Beaver has soared into the ranks of the precious furs nowadays, and it is nutria, its sister in appearance, which comes within the range of the normal purse Both skins must be plucked. In the natural state the top hairs are three inches long and of a coarse, bright black or reddish-brown. When unhaired, nutria has only half the depth of underwood of the beaver neither is it so close. The darkest skins of both fetch the biggest prices.
One hesitates almost to mention sable, its value is so tremendous. It is not a fancy value either, for the fur genuinely possesses a combination. of rare qualities. The pelts are exceedingly fine and close in texture, and although of little weight are very durable, and the fur gives.a sensation of warmth directly it is put on the body. Russian sable is easily the queen of the family, American and Canadian come next, and then Chinese and Japanese. They all belong to the marten family, the name "sable" being given because of the rich darkness of colour—a point easy to remember when choosing skins. Mink is a lovely "stand-in" for sable. It is very durable and the colour is beautiful. The best skins are very dark but they range through the browns to pale—the colour depending on the place of origin.
Costly Thy Habit—
Having invested in a good fur coat—and it is economical to buy the best that you can afford—the next step is to take good care of it. It should never be folded up or packed away in a trunk as this crushes the hairs and it is difficult without special treatment to bring them back to normal again. Don't expose furs to rain if you can possibly help it, but if they do get wet they should be well shaken and allowed to dry in a current of air without exposure to sun or open fire. Sunlight has a tendency to bleach furs and to encourage the development of moth eggs. If you want to be really kind to your furs give them as little warmth and sunshine as possible. They are wintry treasures and they have been divorced from their natural source of resuscitation; therefore anything which tends to destroy the natural oils should be avoided. By careful curing the good furrier has preserved the largest percentage possible of these oils, for on them depends the colour and life of the fur and its deterioration is arrested by them. Once they have been lost the fur is dead indeed.
On all sides fur coats are being extracted from the cold storage which has been their salvation during the months of heat and damp. It is realized now that camphor balls and the usual malodorous powders are not only disagreeable but quite useless as a protection against moths, for any chemical strong enough to kill the life in a moth egg would be sufficiently potent to injure the fur itself.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.