After the coming of the cargoes the sales of the furs were held in December, or March, by public auction if possible, but in years when war demoralized trade, by private contract. This was the climax of the year to the fur trader. Even during the century when the French raiders swept the bay, an average of ten thousand beaver a year was brought home. Later, otter and mink and marten and ermine became valuable. These, the common furs, whalebone, ivory, elks’ hoofs and whale blubber made up the lists of the winter sales. Before the days of newspapers, the lists were posted in the Royal Exchange and sales held “by candle” in lieu of auctioneer’s hammer—a tiny candle being lighted, pins stuck in at intervals along the shaft, and bids shouted till the light burned out. One can guess with what critical caress the fur fanciers ran their hands over the soft nap of the silver fox, blowing open the fur to examine the depth and find whether the pelt had been damaged in the skinning. Half a dozen of these rare skins from the fur world meant more than a cargo of beaver. What was it anyway, this creature rare as twentieth century radium, that was neither blue fox nor gray, neither cross nor black? Was it the black fox changing his winter coat for summer dress just caught at the moment by the trapper, or the same fellow changing his summer pelt from silver to black for winter? Was it a turning of the black hairs to silver from old age, trapped luckily just before old age had robbed the fur of its gloss? Was it senility or debility or a splendid freak in the animal world like a Newton or a Shakespeare in the human race? Of all the scientists from Royal Society and hall of learning, who came to gossip over the sales at the coffee houses, not one could explain the silver fox. Or was the soul of the fur trader, like the motto painted on his coat of arms by John Pinto for thirty shillings, in December, 1679—_Pro Pelle Cutem_—not above the value of a beaver skin? Terse business methods of to-day, where the sales are advertised in a newspaper and afterward held apart from the goods, have robbed them of their old-time glamor, for the sale was to the city merchant what the circus is to the country boy, the event of the year. By the committee of Nov. 8, 1680, “_Sir James Hayes is desired to choose 3 doz. bottles of sack & 3 doz. of claret to be given the buyers at the sale & a dinner to be spoke at the Stellyarde, Mr. Stone to bespeake a good dish of fish, a lione of veale, 2 pullets and 4 ducks._”