HISTORY OF MEPHITES MEPHITICA. 221 



certain, nor do I know its meaning. A likeness to the word 

 most suggestive of the animal, and which appears in the Ger- 

 man StinUMer, is too obvious to require comment, but the 

 resemblance may be fortuitous. It may be observed that the 

 Cree or Knistenaux word is seecaic'k, which is quite likely the 

 origin of the name, as the sound is not so very different, though 

 the literal discrepancy is great. The American-English name 

 '' pole-cat'" or "pol-cat", by which the Swedish of Kalm is 

 rendered, and which has long been an appellation of this and 

 other species of Skunks, is simply a transferring of the Euro- 

 pean-English name of the Fitch, Putorius foetidus, the worst- 

 smelling species of its own continent, to the Western animal, 

 which has the same enviable notoriety. The terms pol-cat or 

 pole-cat and skunk were both used by Lawson about the be- 

 ginning of the last century. "Polcats or Skunks in Amer- 

 ica," says he, " are different from those in Europe. They are 

 thicker and of a great many Colours; not all alike, but each 

 differing from another in the particular Colour. They smell 

 like a Fox but ten times stronger. When a Dog encounters 

 them, they void upon him, and he will not be sweet again for a 

 fortnight or more. The Indians love to eat their Flesh, which 

 has no manner of ill smell, when the Bladder is out." " Skunk" 

 was formerly used adjectively, as we see in the *' Skunk Wee- 

 sel" of Pennant, which may be deemed exactly equivalent to 

 the "Mephitic weesel" of Shaw. "Chinche" was a term ap- 

 plied by early French zoologists to this and other MephitlncVj 

 and in its various forms of chinclie or chincha^ chinge or cMnga, 

 was long current. The last-named form, indeed, became with 

 many authors, after Tiedemann, the specific name of the spe- 

 cies in binominal nomenclature. 



The early history of the species in technical nomenclature, as 

 distinguished from that of the animal in non-scientific accounts, 

 is much involved. It may be well to state that authors have 

 gone to opposite extremes in treating of Skunks as species. 

 Some, like Cuvier, 'Mumped" them all together, whilst others 

 made every streak or spot the basis of a species. We do not 

 find the present species clearly and unequivocally indicated by 

 the founder and earliest supporters of the binomial system ; on 

 the contrary, the Linn.-Gmel. accounts, though undoubtedly cov- 

 ering this even then well-known species, are so infiltrated with 

 reference to other species as to be not properly citable in this 

 connection. Linnoeus put the Skunks in his genus Viverra, 



