Besides beaver skins, which were used for making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada.

"Buffalo" robes--the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red fox;[11] wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of the skunk--a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family, which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body.

(The skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian Dominion).

At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.
[Footnote 11: The blue fox is the Arctic fox (_Canis lagopus_) in its summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of the common fox (_C.

vulpes_); so also is the red or "cross" fox.