THE USE OF RABBIT SKINS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 25, 30 January 1884, Page 4

THE USE OF RABBIT SKINS.

The writer of Colonial Notes in the Neio Zealand Times supplies the following interesting account of the use of rabbit skins, and their preparation . —

Now for a few remarks on rabbit skins. I used to be uuder the impres sion they were used as fur for ornamenting ladies' dresses. lam now undeceived. This week I went over the factory of one of the largest rabbit skin buyers in London. There women of the lowest class are employed to pull out the outer or hairy part of the fur, and leave the true fur next the skin. This is accomplished by means of a knife and the thumb of the workwoman. The factory iv which the London industry is carried on is situated in Felix-street, Lambeth. It is a fine large building, built especially for the purpose by a New York firm of fur-cutters and skin merchants, of which it constitutes a branch.- The top floor is the large work room. On entering it I found myself in a dusky and malodorous atmosphere. The air felt close, oppressive, and was thickly charged with particles of dust, hair, and fur which were incessantly descending and covering one's clothes, like a shower of fine snow in winter. The floor was thickly occupied by benches, at which sat two hundred young women, some married, others single ; but all poorly clad in their tattered and worn working dresses. They sat together in long rows; some were coughing, but all were rapidly and nimbly plying their leather-co-vered thumbs and their sharp roughedged knives lo tear out the hair from the skins. It was a strange and painful sight — strange because the women's garments and the hair of their heads were covered with a coating of flue of an inch in thickness which gave them the appearance of being all one colour, and that colour grey. Ifc was painful because they seemed to be mostly of the degraded class of women, pursuing an unwomanly occupation. Their hours of labor are long, from eight in the morning till seven in the evening, with stated times for dinner or tea. Their work is piecework, and they can earn from ten to fifteen shillings a week, which is certainly better pay than similar classes receive at the East End of London, where the " bitter cry" is now raised. When their day's work is done some of them change their working dress for more becoming attire. The operation of pulling out the hairs from the rabbit skius accomplished, leaves the real fur next the skin intact, and the skin itself, thus dressed, is dried and becomes a marketable commodity. The last process is to neatly pack the dressed skins in bales, and ship them to New York, where the fur is extensively used in the manufacture of felt hats, and the pelts are transformed into glue. The fur is worth as much as 6s per pound in New York. It is only made into the best felt hats, the commoner ones being manufactured out of wool. A fur felt hat is worth double the price of a wool one. Thero was a very great demand for colonial rabbitskins a few months ago for dress fur purposes ; but they do nofc take the dye well, and the demand in this direction is falling off. However, for the manufacture of felt hats the demand is great and increasing. In the factory I have been speaking sf 120,000 skins pass through the hands of the workers in the course of a week. The rabbit skins from the South Island (New Zealand) are con ■■ sidered the best. Next .to them come those from the North Island, and the least valuable are the skins from Australia. The prime skins from about Dunedin are worth from 3s 6d to 4s per dozen, and those from Wellington average from 3s to 3s Bd. Some few extra good and large are worth from 4d to od each. At the last public sales 1,700 out of 18,000 bales were sold at from ls lOd to 2s per lb. Much depends on the packing, sorting, and the size of the skins. " Kittens " are not worth sending Home. The skins of rabbits killed in the four winter months are the most valuable. The trade in rabbit skins is assuming large dimensions ; at last sales, 4,320,000' skins were offered for sale, and realised £50,000. If this demand continues, the extinction of the rabbit pest in New Zealand is only a question, one may hope, of a few years.