240 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



weeks in regions where these badgers abounded, and 

 where their innumerable burrows offered the principal 

 obstacle to progress on horseback or by wheeled con- 

 veyance, yet he never saw more than five, and they were 

 in sight but a few moments as they hurried to the 

 nearest hole. They prey upon other and much smaller 

 burrowing beasts belonging to the rat and field-mouse 

 order, and also on insects, snails, and birds' eggs. They 

 are very fond of the stores of wild bees, the honey, wax, 

 and grubs being alike devoured. But the creature of 

 the weasel tribe most notoriously fond of the honey is 

 the ratel of Africa and India, a beast very much of 

 the build of a badger, with a head and body a little over 

 two and a half feet long and a tail half a foot long. It 

 is found all over Hindostan, but not in Ceylon, and is 

 strictly nocturnal, remaining in its burrow by day. 

 Though it eats honey when it can get it, rats, birds, 

 frogs, and insects are eaten also. It is, by the natives 

 of India, suspected of digging into graves to eat the 

 bodies of the dead, but there is no foundation for such a 

 suspicion. 



The martens, sables, polecats, stoats, ermines, and 

 weasels form a very natural assemblage of long-bodied, 

 short-limbed, small beasts of prey, exceedingly blood- 

 thirsty in their habits. The martens are only found in 

 the northern hemisphere, where they range through the 

 greater part of both the Old World and the New. Their 

 sectorial teeth are very efficient flesh cutters, and there is 

 but one tubercular tooth behind it in either jaw. They 

 live in trees and climb with great facility. The sable of 

 the Old World is found chiefly in Eastern Siberia. The 

 New World sable is extensively distributed in North 

 America from Newfoundland to Colorado. In spite of 

 the persistent and uninterrupted destruction to which it 



