Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/875

 F U R F U R 839 Seal, JTair. Chiefly from the North Atlantic. Size from 3 to 6 feet ; hair coarse and rigid ; no fur ; divided into white coats, blue backs, mottled, and ordinary. Used for saddlery and military purposes. Average price, 2s. Seal, Fur. Found only in the Pacific and in the South Atlantic. Size of the wigs, 4 by 8 feet ; of the large, 3 by 6 feet ; middling, 2 by 5 feet ; small, 2 by 4 feet ; the pups vary in length from 2 to 4 feet. Overhair coarse and rigid; fur fine, thick, silky, and very uniformly distributed. Pelt thin, pliable, and of light weight. The largest number come from Alaska, whence 100,000 are allowed by law to be brought annually. The best of these are the prime middling pups. Value varies from 1 to 3 in the salted state. A few hue skins come from the coast of British Columbia, and being caught in winter are in prime condition. The choicest skins are taken on the South Shetland and South Georgia Islands in the Antarctic Ocean. Fur fine beyond comparison; pelt very pliable, light, and thin and linn. Value salted, from 2 to 10. Skunk. Another peculiar production of North America. Size, 10 by 16 inches long; overhair fine, 3 inches long, dark blue and colfee brown, thick, glossy, and flowing. Many have two white stripes, more or less broad, extending from the head to the tail. It is now easy to deodorize the skin, and the fur is a popular one in all countries. The best are from New York and Ohio; value of best prime black, from 4s. to 10s. Squirrel. Only those of northern Europe and Asia have a value as merchandise. American are worthless. Size, 3 by 6 inches; overhair and fur equally fine ; colour from pale blue to clear dark blue ; best are from eastern Siberia ; palest and poorest from European Russia ; bellies white ; tails long and bushy. This fur is in universal demand among furriers for muffs and linings, as well as for largo garments. Pelt pliable and tough ; fur durable, close, and fine. The tails are made into boas and brushes. Tiger. Specimens are rare. Those from Bengal are large and short in hair, but well marked ; while those from northern China have hair 2 to 3 inches long, and frequently measure 10 to 14 feet in length. Value of the latter, from 10 to 20. Wolf. Tho largest are from Labrador, measuring from 4 to 6 feet long, chiefly grey-brown in colour, with long, flowing, coarse overhair. The finest are from Fort Churchill, and fetch a high price. The American prairie wolf is a variety inferior in every respect. Price of best, 2 ; of the inferior, 4s. The wolf is very destructive of the fur-bearing animals, and is an object of extermina tion with all trappers. Wolowin. From Russia, Norway, and Hudson s Bay. Colour a clear dark brown, overhair coarse, 2i inches long. Value from 12s. to 24s. Of the fur-bearers, those that seek their food in water have their finest but shortest fur on the belly, and longer fur upon the back ; while those that avoid the rivers have their longest and finest fur upon the back, and their bellies clothed with fine, long, flowing overhair. Dressing. Raw furs are made ready for use by softening the pelt with pure butter or olive oil, trampling them in tubs filled with fins hardwood sawdust at about blood heat, drawing the pelt over a sharp knife to remove every particle of flesh, and finally trampling them again in clean sawdust. The pelt thus becomes soft and pliable like the fine kid used for gloves. They are then ready for the furrier, who assorts the skins as to colour and overhair, and cuts them in various ways to bring them to the pattern of the article required. Having been sewed together with a close, fine overseam, the article is damped, and stretched upon a smooth pine board after a pattern marked, then nailed along its edges and left to dry. After removal from the board the article is trimmed, and softened by rubbing, and is then ready for the liner. The skill of the furrier lies in the taste exhibited in the arrangement of the furs, and in the economy of use of material. Di/einy. Furs are dyed in a variety of ways to make them uniform in colour, and adapt them to the fashion and taste of the time. Ordinarily this is a cheap and ready process, and only becomes an art when employed upon fine skins, from which the overhair has been first removed by plucking, leaving the fur alone to receive the dye-stuff. Among these are the skins of the musk rat, beaver, otter, and especially the fur seal ; the last has received very careful attention, as its entire value depends upon the perfection and success of the process. Unprime fur seals pirt with their overhair very reluctantly, while the seasoned skins arc very readily unhaired, leaving the fur in all its smoothness ; thus the best grades are likely to be very good, while the rest rank only from ordinary to very com mon. A subsequent process is the removal of all grease from the fur, which is effected by repeated washings in softened water; if this is imperfectly done, the colour will be uneven and not permanent. The final work is to prepare a dye of suitable strength, and apply it in a suitable way, to infuse the colouring matters into the fur, without suffering too much of it to reach the pelt, whereby its durability might be ruined. London claims to have accom plished this for the sealskin in a manner that distances all competition ; and it certainly enjoys a wide popularity, as well as the substantial fruits of the sale of its production of coloured seals. But^America also has its successful dyers of seals, one of the most important of the results they have achieved being the giving to the fur seal a fine deep brown colour, without injuring or burning the fur, while leaving the pelt soft, light, and durable. Prices of Fanc.y Furs. The market value of dressed and manufactured furs is at the mercy of fickle fashion and the weather. The production of any one variety is very limited, and consequently those that are in fashion during a cold winter command full and even extravagant prices, while others, of equal intrinsic merit, have a merely nominal value. The consumer is not more responsible for this than are the furrier and the fur merchant. It was 1 the remark of an old and successful fur dealer that &quot;furs when wanted are diamonds, wheii not wanted are char coal.&quot; This fact renders the trade an extremely hazardous one, and tends to make the venture in it a matter of specu lation rather than of provident enterprise ; and while the consumer occasionally may have to pay a very extravagant price for some few varieties of furs for a short period, it happens far more frequently that the fur dealer is a severe sufferer by reason of sanguine anticipations of advance in values, which in nine cases out of ten are doomed to disappointment. (M. M. B.) The foregoing article is reprinted, by permission of Messrs Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, Mass., from Put and the Fur Tra/l&amp;lt;, by M. M. Backus, Boston, 1879. FUREEDPORE. See FARIDPUR. FURETIERE, ANTOINE, best known as the author of a Dictionnaire Universel de la Langue Fran^aise, was born at Paris in 1620, and died 14th May 1G88. He fir.st studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but finally entered the church and became abbd of Chalivoy. In his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires Nouvelle Allegorique ou Histoire des derniern troubles arrives au royaume d eloquence, 1658; Voyage de Mercure, 1659, &c. he was admitted a member of the French Academy in 1662. That learned body had long promised to the world a complete dictionary of the French tongue ; and when they heard that Furetiere was on the point of issuing a work of a similar nature, they inter fered, alleging that he had purloined from their stores, and that they possessed the exclusive privilege of publish ing such a book. After much bitter recrimination on both sides the offender was expelled in 1685 ; but for this act of injustice he took a severe revenge in his satire Couches de V Academic. The reply which he made to the Academi cian Charpentier, entitled Factums, ran through four edi tions. His dictionary was published at Rotterdam two years after his death. It was afterwards revised and im proved by Basnage, who published his edition in 1701 and again in 1725; and it continued to enjoy a high reputa tion till the appearance of the Dictionnaire de Trevoux, for which indeed it furnished the basis. Furetiere s other works do not possess any great literary merit : but one of them, Le Roman Bourgeois, is of interest as descriptive of