No April's Fool today, just a sincere plug for a book I very much enjoyed, Beaverland, by Leila Philip. It's a well-written volume of natural history, made engaging with a bit of humor too as well as some fascinating illustrations. I've seen a beaver while paddling in the Charles River and at least one beaver has made a watery home in my city, a suburb of Boston.
While on a family vacation in Montreal long ago, we bicycled to the Lachine Museum of the Fur Trade. French voyageurs - early explorer/traders - bought or bartered beaver pelts from Native Americans. At the museum we learned that the European hat making process did not utilize the intact pelts for hat making but separated the soft underfur of the beaver pelts from the longer, coarser guard hairs. The soft underfur was felted and this material was then molded into hats.
Although silk became the preferred material for top hats, beaver pelts are still used today for the international fashion industry. California recently outlawed the trade in new animal fur products; perhaps other states will follow suit.
