44 THE TAIGA, OR CONIFEROUS 
animals are stated to defoliate completely the trees 
they attack. 
As regards the carnivores, the special features of the 
northern forests are the relative poverty in true cats, 
so abundant in tropical forests generally, and the 
wealth of arboreal animals of the weasel family, which 
are most abundant in temperate latitudes, and take 
there the place of the true cats and civets elsewhere. 
The bears also are characteristic of temperate forests, 
though not confined to them. 
There is a close resemblance between the carnivores 
of the American and Siberian taigas. Thus in both are 
found lynxes, the common wolf, the common fox, bears, 
martens, the glutton, and among less purely forest 
forms, weasels, stoats, minks, and badgers. In Siberia, 
especially in the south, the tiger is sometimes found, 
while in the Canadian taiga the puma (Felis concolor) 
does not occur, although it is common in the coniferous 
forest of the Rocky Mountains. The wild cat (Felis 
catus) of the wooded parts of Europe does not occur in 
the Siberian forest, while it ‘is altogether absent from 
America. An animal found in the Canadian forests, 
but with no Old World representative, is the skunk 
(Mephitis mephitica), a member of a group charac- 
teristic of South America, and the only one which 
ranges far north. 
The lynxes are represented by the common lynx 
(Felis lynx) in Siberia, and by a closely related species 
(Ff. canadensis) in the woods of Canada. They are 
expert climbers, and are true forest animals, but the 
Canadian form is stated to feed chiefly on hares and 
birds of the grouse family, so that it must find its food 
largely on the ground. The common wolf is not 
specially fitted for forest life; it lives either in the 
