Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/368

310 of oysters and 50,000 cases of lobster are fished around its shores. The value of all fish taken annually in island waters, including bivalves, crustaceans, cod, hake, haddock, herring and mackerel, is approximately $1,500,000. A bank report says this province with its population of 100,000 has savings deposits of $10,000,000 and is per capita the richest rural community in the Dominion.

More remunerative than its industries of agriculture and fishing is the fur farming of Prince Edward Island, an enterprise which in the past few years has made a sensational advance. More than a quarter of a century ago a merchant of Tignish secured a pair of silver foxes from an Anticosti trapper and bred them so successfully that three companions joined him in experiments with animals captured in the island woods until a profitable ranch was established. At first the litters of captive black foxes were valued solely for their skins, which frequently brought from one to two thousand dollars each at the London auctions. The industry is at present confined to breeding for live foxes. Animals of known strain find a market at $12,000 to $30,000 a pair. Companies are capitalised with two pairs or more as assets, the average number of their pups being three in a year.

The pedigreed fox has "thin mobile ears; a full neck, short and arched from the back; width over