CHAPTER XV 



THE FUR-BEAKERS AND THEIR 

 CULTURE 



THERE now present themselves a company of 

 small carnivores of unusual interest in every 

 aspect the martens, ermines, wolverines, bad- 

 gers, skunks, etc., all of the weasel family 

 Mustelidce. "They constitute," as I have 

 written elsewhere, "an army of sharp-toothed, 

 keen-witted, bloodthirsty devourers of the 

 small life of the world, doing in the North 

 the police work which in the Oriental tropics is 

 committed to the civet-cats and mungooses. 

 These are the animals whose coats, acquired to 

 keep themselves warm amid arctic frosts, make 

 our most beautiful furs, as sable, marten, mink, 

 ermine, and the rest. The sable is Siberian, 

 the marten is North-European, and its Ameri- 

 can brother is the pine-marten, or ' sable ' of the 

 Canadian forests. The three are scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable, each averaging about eighteen in- 

 ches in length, plus seven or eight inches of tail, 

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