Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1889 — Monkey skin Muffs. [ARTICLE]

Monkey skin Muffs.

Muffs of monkey skin are al way e much admired. This far is really taken from the back of chimpanzees like the late Mr. Crowley, of New York. Five years ago they were almost unknown, and dealers on the west coast of Africa bought them of the natives for $1.50 a dozen, shipping them to London with instructions to make them up into driving gloves and offer them to the trade. But their peculiarly long black hairs, for the monkey can scarcely be said to have a fur, at once won favor, and the orice went up so rapidly that agents at Sierra Leone fairiv coined money before the natives discovered the advance in values. But the animal from which this strange material is secured is comparatively rare in Africa, and exists nowhere else on the globe. A few years more and monkey skins will be almost as rare as blacks ables.