THE SCARCITY OF SKUNKS 91 



the broth, and to be locked in, half awake, for 

 nearly three months. Poor little beastie ! Per- 

 haps he had n't intelligence enough to know 

 that those gnawings within him were pain. Per- 

 haps our sympathy is all agley. Perhaps. But 

 we are bound to feel it when we watch him 

 satisfying his pangs with the pestiferous insects 

 of our own wood-lot. 



I saw him safely home, and then returned to 

 examine the long furrows he had ploughed out 

 among the leaves. I found nothing to show what 

 species of insects he had eaten, but it was enough 

 to know that he had been bent on bugs — gypsy- 

 moth eggs, maybe, on the underside of some stick 

 or stone, where they had escaped the keen eye of 

 the tree-warden. We are greatly exercised over 

 this ghastly caterpillar. But is it entomologists, 

 and national appropriations, and imported para- 

 sites that we need to check the ravaging plague ? 

 These things might help, doubtless; but I was 

 intending to show in my monograph that it is 

 only skunks we need; it is the scarcity of skunks 

 that is the whole trouble — and the abundance 

 of cats. 

 , My heart warmed, I say, as I watched my one 



