90 BULLETIN NO VII. 



and at last had the anal lips, two muscular pouches and the small glands 

 connected with them. My fortitude here giving out, and it growing 

 dark, I adjourned the matter to the next day. 



When I resumed operations, on the parts now weighing only about two 

 ounces out of a Mephitis of nine pounds, I had a strip of skin with the 

 anal lips, the suspicious calices or cones in their cup-like cavities and the 

 pouches. * * * I began by severing the two muscular pouches and 

 found no connection between them. Books say 'the animal gives its 

 peculiar and penetrating odor from two glands situated external to pel vis.' 

 I found the 'glands' to be clear muscular fibre, with not a particle of 

 smell, or a trace of any glandular structure. Further to test the matter, I 

 cut slowly to the middle of the mass of muscular, not glandular, fibres 

 and came upon a thick, white leathery capsule like the crop of a chicken, 

 with the source for the contents provided by the little glands about it. 

 Now, putting on old clothes and sitting to the windward, I cut through 

 this white capsule; a bright yellow fluid came out and I instantly felt that 

 'distance would lend enchantment to the view.' But I was not to be 

 baffled. So I dipped the point of my scalpel in the yellow fluid, put the 

 tenth or twentieth part of a drop on a glass and covered it with another 

 strip of glass, and placed it under a power of forty diameters in my 

 microscope. The appearance was peculiar. It looked like moulten gold, 

 or like quicksilver of the finest golden color. Pressure on the strips of 

 glass made it flow like globules of melted gold. 



By a power of sixty diameters the same color still appeared, but seemed 

 as if it would by a higher power resolve itself into globules, with peculiar 

 markings. -* * * TO the eye, the peculiar and odoriferous secretion of 

 this animal is of a pale bright glistening yellow, with specks floating in 

 it. By the microscope it looks like a clear fluid, as water with masses of 

 gold in it, and the specks like bubbles of air covered with gold, or rather 

 air in golden sacs. The air I take to be the gas nascent from the golden 

 fluid. * * * Another thing was a matter of interest. If I correctly 

 made out the capsule of fluid, the commonly called 'glands' are the mus- 

 cular tunic enveloping and capable of compressing the reservoir, and their 

 sole use is to eject the liquid. The teat like projections have one large 

 orifice fora distant jet of the substance, and also a strainer, with num- 

 erous holes like the holes in the cones of the human kidney for a near 

 but diffusive jetting of the matter. The substance is secreted by small 

 dark glands, of small callibre, connected with the capsule by narrow 

 ducts." 



The technical peculiarities characteristic of the skunks are 

 here collated. 



Skull. Dental formula: i.|:|,c.}:J,pm. i:|,(|;|),m.i:l--H(li)*-34(32); 

 The variation indicated in the premolar formula occurs in 

 the genus Conepatus, where the number is usually (but, 

 according to Coues, not always as once supposed) f :|. A 

 comparison of the inferior aspect of the skull of Mephitis with 

 that of Putorius shows that there is no anterior extension of 

 the orbital space and consequent elongation of the zygomatic 

 arch. The encroachment on the palatal part of the maxillary 



