HOW SKUNKS DEFEND THEMSELVES 



29 



FISHERS AKK F(JXD OF BEING XEAR WATER 

 The name of the animal is a misnomer, as it does not catch 

 living fish, but it will eat them when occasion offers. It has been 

 known to kill deer and prey upon rabbits, foxes, porcupines and 

 other mammals. 



species. From man's earliest history down to the pres- 

 ent time, the economic value of the family has ever been 

 on ithe increase, and this has only slackened when, through 

 man's agency, the animals giving rise to it have been, to a 

 greater or less degree, destroyed and exterminated. Dur- 

 ing this rise and decadence, however, simply untold mil- 

 lions of the pelts have been collected, bought, sold, met 

 the demands of fashion, formed food for billions of 

 moths, been worn out, and gradually passed out of exis- 

 tence. To a large extent, this trade and this sequence of 



things is still going on. The statistics of the sales of the 

 pelts by the Hudson Bay and Canadian companies alone 

 is something stupendous. 



No family in the Class Mammalia is better defined than 

 the present one, or more clearly distinguished through its 

 zoological characters in the order Carnivora, to which it 

 belongs. And, notwithstanding the great apparent differ- 

 ence between a badger and a. weasel, or a skunk and a 

 sea otter, the comparative anatomy of the group fur- 

 nishes the best proof of the true relationships of its fam- 

 ily members. 



As to their place in the system, the writer is of the 

 opinion that the musteline assemblage is, above all oth- 

 ers, most closely related to the Bears (Ursidac), this 



OTTERS TYPIFY THE AQUATIC MAMMALS 

 Our common otter is now becommg very scarce; like its cousin, 

 the mink, it is very fond of fish, and it is extremely expert in 

 catching them. Note the webbed feet of the animal, which is 

 from A. C. Gould's "Where to Find American Game." 



FINE PICTURE OF A BADGER 

 This remarkable photograph of the American Badger was made 

 from life by Mr. Elwin R. Sanborn, and is here used by his per- 

 mission. Note the median white stripe on the head of the ani- 

 mal, agreeing with what we see, in some skunks. 



through the family S/wric/ae (the Panda,) and primarily 

 the Racoons. On the other hand, a more remote, 

 though not so very distant a kinshi]), is seen in the dogs 

 and their various allies. 



Upon examining the main and anatomical characters, 

 it would a]ipear that this family is easily divisible into 

 no less than eight subfamilies. Of these eight five are 

 represented in the United States, the martens and weas- 

 els (one subfamily) ; the badgers ; the skunks ; the Ameri- 

 can otters, and the sea otters. Nine genera make up these 

 five subfamilies that is, the otters, Ithe sea otters, three 

 kinds of skunks and three in the marten group as the 

 minks, weasels and wolverene. 



Various fossil forms of these animals have been dis- 

 covered from time to time. The skunks are strictly of 

 North American distribution, but widely known in other 



(^Continued on page 41) 



