Skunk 



along the sides of the tail, and a white stripe down the 

 forehead. Sometimes the white is almost restricted to the 

 patch on the neck, and in the other specimens the stripes 

 are united, making the whole back white. 



Range. New England to Virginia and Indiana, replaced to the 

 North and South by closely allied varieties. 



The skunk belongs in the same group with the minks and 

 weasels, all the members of which are capable of emitting a 

 powerful, almost suffocating odour when angry, and this undoubt- 

 edly gives them a decided advantage in a hand-to-hand com- 

 bat. But the present species has made itself notorious by per- 

 fecting this gift to a degree that furnishes it with a complete 

 defense against all but the most desperate enemies. The general 

 effect on the race is very noticeable. 



No longer being compelled to be forever on the alert to 

 escape or repulse the sudden attacks of an enemy, the little 

 beast of the black and white fur has grown fat and lazy. It 

 still retains much of the slender and graceful form of the weasels, 

 but has allowed its muscles to become soft and tender, and so 

 burdened with fat as to render rapid and prolonged exertion 

 almost an impossibility; its flesh in the meantime having become 

 palatable to every meat-eating creature, not even excepting 

 man. All those who through want or curiosity have ever tasted 

 it, agree in pronouncing it equal in flavour and tenderness to 

 that of any four-footed creature: while no one, not even an 

 Indian or a wolf, will eat the flesh of a mink or weasel unless 

 rendered desperate by hunger. Is it not possible that the peculiar 

 quality of the flesh of these weasels has been developed partly 

 as a safeguard ? 



For large, warm-blooded game of whose flesh it still retains 

 the fondness characteristic of its family, the skunk must depend 

 on luck or strategy to supply the want of the agility which its 

 race has thrown away. During the summer and autumn this 

 loss is hardly felt; grasshoppers, crickets and the like are to be 

 picked up everywhere in abundance, and compose the regular fare of 

 the species; snakes are also caught by them in considerable num- 

 bers, and birds' nests containing eggs or helpless young are to be 

 had for the seeking. The short burrows of the field-mice seldom 

 reach many inches below the turf, and the nests containing the 

 young mice are easily uncovered. 



3*5 



