ERMINE IN DEMAND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 156, 15 April 1936, Page 8

ERMINE IN DEMAND.

THE KING’S CORONATION. It seems a little early to be laying plans for the coronation of King Edward VIII., but a message from Tacoma, Washington (.which is therefore in the most northerly of the United States), assumes that reactions to that ceremony are already being felt in the wide, open spaces of the American North-west, states the “Manchester Guardian” in an editorial. Tacoma is the scene of a fur market, and the message says that fur traders are even now buying up ermine pelts at prices that may be 50 per cent, ahead of normal rates because the traders deduce that ermine will be in great demand for coronation robes. Even then they will hardly establish from Tacoma a “corner” in ermine, because a great deal of it is imported from Norway and Lapland rather than from Alaska or the Hudson Bay regions. Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that Northern Europe must be able to supply ermine, because that fur was being worn by monarchs and Court officials, and even being drawn as a “tincture” in the devices of heraldry, at a period when no European had ever seen or heard of Alaska or Hudson Bay. The Tacoma message says that “American ermine is obtained from an animal known as the northwest weasel,” which may sound a humble source for so lordly a fur. Actually all ermines are of the weasel tribe; the ermine of Europe is simply the ordinary stoat of Great Britain whose brown coat, in more northern regions, turns white in winter except for a black tip to its tail. When the pelts are made up into garments the black tip is used to set off the white fur—and there is the origin of one of the most regal of trappings.