The result is that, all over the world, wherever hairy things creep, crawl, or climb, men are ready with guns and traps. Three times a year the pelts of the world pour into London to be distributed. Whenever this happens a large auction-room in Queen Street will provide you with the strangest sight in the City of London. You walk in through a courtyard past a man in white overalls. As I passed him recently he said: "Hudson Bay Company selling now, sir!" and, do you know, I felt young all over! I thrilled. Hudson Bay Company! Shades of Fenimore Cooper! In one swift, pregnant moment I saw the white lands I used to know so well when I was at school, the driving sheets of snow, the tugging sleigh dogs, and the big, square-bearded men, with matted hair frozen under round fur hats, bending forward against the storm, urging on their teams, taking their piled sleighs to the trading post. I crossed the courtyard and entered the auction-room. What a scene! Men who buy furs in every country in the world were present. They sat tier on tier, a good five hundred of them, looking like a full session of the Parliament of the United States of Europe. No common auction this: it was a fur parliament, a senate of seal and musquash. Russians, Poles, Germans, Dutch, French, every kind of Jew, and a good balance of English and American. If Sir Arthur Keith had been with me he would have gone crazy over the marvellous skulls and cheek bones. It was, anthropologically, a splendid sight. They retained their hats as they sat in the wide half-moon of the fur theatre. What hats! Here and there I picked out a round astrakhan cap, and, of course, there were fur coats. One man unbuttoned his coat. Somebody had been killing leopards! Seven men sat high up above the assembly, facing it, and in the centre of the seven was the auctioneer: "Any advance on three hundred?" Instead of the nods and lifted eyebrows of any ordinary saleroom there was a violent agitation. To make a bid in this room a man had to create a scene. In two minutes the place looked like a crisis in the French Senate. Men desiring mink rose and shot up their arms. The three hundred pounds advanced to five hundred, hesitated, and spurted on to seven hundred. Then a man with a Central European beard rose (exposing a fine nutria lining) and carried the day. The hammer fell! At least twenty more women would have fur coats next winter! * * * So it went on. Millions of potential fur coats were bought and--not one of them in sight! They were all lying in warehouses somewhere in London; they had all been carefully examined before the sale.