8 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



stories of the impossibility of trapping the fiend. No deadfall, 

 snare, or spring gun ever injured this " evil one/' and it does not 

 require a vivid imagination to trace the growth of fiction, when 

 we consider the impulsive coureur de hois, after the toil of setting 

 his chain of traps and visiting them with the result above re- 

 ferred to, allowing himself to believe that he was verily beset by 

 a devil, and at the camp fire, or, better still, as the honored 

 guest of some credulous settler, unfolding and enlarging upon 

 his experiences. These stories, however, become comprehensible 

 when we remember that the track through the deep snow, beaten 

 by the snowshoes of the hunter on his rounds, formed an inviting 

 highway along which the short-limbed quadruped could freely 

 travel, while it soon learned that a journey of a few miles meant 

 the picking up of a substantial meal which some kind friend had 

 carefully placed in sheltered nooks as if regardful of its wants ; 

 for the traps of those days were mostly modifications of the 

 "deadfall," and required but limited strength and cunning to 

 circumvent. 



The creature has always been comparatively scarce, although 

 its habitat is large ; hence the stories are widespread and the 

 scientific study of its reputed habits difficult. That the pelt is 

 rather an uncommon article of commerce does not necessarily 

 imply that it is of great value, although we find numerous exag- 

 gerations associated with this feature. It is stated in reports 

 from the East that the skin was formerly held in such high 

 repute that the angels permitted this fur alone to appear on their 

 celestial robes, and Eastern merchants are said to have allowed 

 an equivalent of forty or fifty dollars per skin ; yet we find no 

 market during the past one hundred and fifty years has ever 

 quoted the pelt at more than one fourth of these figures, and to- 

 day's quotations place five dollars as the maximum value. The 

 demand, being as limited as the supply, accounts for this, for the 

 skins are not more plentiful thaii those of the silver fox, which 

 easily fetch one hundred dollars. The fabulous values seem to 

 have reference to albino varieties, which must ever have been ex- 

 cessively rare ; and though there is much beauty in the normal 

 coloring of rich sable brown, with the paler bands along the 

 flanks, the utility of the pelt is restricted, owing chiefly to the 

 coarseness of the hair; and the size only one fourth that of 

 the black bear skin is of a decided mediocrity, filling but few 

 wants. 



Admitting that sufficient knowledge of the animal has now 

 been acquired to place it in its true systematic order, it is found 

 to have no connection whatever with the bears, nor does there 

 appear to be any affinity with the evil spirits ; while the Anglo- 

 Saxon name, implying associations with the wolf, is equally in- 



