HISTORY OF THE LITTLE STRIPED SKUNK. 245 



names which have become most extensively current. Referring 

 to the above synouymatic list as a resume of the views enter- 

 tained concerning the record of the species, some points of 

 special pertinence to M. putorius may be here noticed. 



Le Zorille of Buffon (Hist. Nat. xiii. 1765, pp. 289, 302, pi. 41) 

 is a starting-poiQt of a number of compilations, as at the hands 

 of Erxleben, Gmelin, Shaw, and others; it does not reappear 

 in Linn?eus, who carried his grudge against his French rival so 

 far as to ignore him in the "Systema Naturae", thereby hurting 

 only the book. It is described from South America, and is to be 

 carefully distinguished from an African species, of an entirely 

 different group, also called Zorllla. Descriptions of a Yiverra 

 or Mephitis zorilla agree substantially in points of small size 

 and much variegation with white ; and thus, perhaps without 

 exception, bear hard upon the present species, if they may not 

 actually represent it. In many cases, however, the accounts are 

 complicated or negatived by introduction among the synonyms 

 of some names which apparently appertain to Conepatus^ or to 

 Mephitis proper. Whether or not we agree with Prof. Lichten- 

 stein that Buffon's Zorille was this species, various indications 

 of Yiverra zorilla which flow from it cannot be satisfactorily 

 and exclusively located here, and are to be passed over. They 

 are, in effect, as they stand upon the pages, compounds which 

 have no actual existence in nature. 



The Pol-cat of Catesby, as above quoted, described with five 

 narrow white lines, is a species which authors have found it 

 difi&cult to locate, as the Common Skunk, M. mephitica^ the only 

 one supposed to inhabit Carolina, presents no such character. 

 But since the discovery of the existence, in this portion of the 

 United States, of a Spilogale, which is the only species having 

 several white lines, the pertinence of Catesby 's. reference here 

 is evident. Catesby is primarily the basis of Viverra putorius^ 

 the only species of Skunk in the 12th edition of Linnaeus; and 

 Linnaeus's diagnosis "F. fusca lineis quatiior dorsalibus albis 

 parallelis^^ is exactly and exclusively pertinent to the present 

 species, which is, moreover, the only animal that presents this 

 character. The four white stripes upon the anterior half of 

 the body are its strong and constant character. It is true that 

 the remainder of Linuaeus's account does not agree well, but 

 neither does it agree with any Skunk known to me ('^ subtus 

 ex albo et nigro variegatus^\ &c.) ; and he also cites some refer- 

 ences that probably belong elsewhere. In adopting the name 



