CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 5. CARNIVORA. 297 



the day. In many of the New England villages, the perfume of the skunk and the cry of the 

 whippoonvill are a frequent summer-evening serenade. The animal lives in the woods and thick- 

 ets, but not unfrequently approaches the habitations of men, and even domiciliates himself in the 

 barns, where he makes sad havoc among the eggs and chickens. We have even heard of one that 

 got into a cellar one night, and being discovered by the house-maid — who, by the way, was brave 

 as a lion in defense of the threshold — she fell upon him and killed him. Such was the stench which 

 followed, that the woman was violently ill for several days, and the meat, bread, and vegetables 

 in the cellar were so impregnated as to be utterly ruined. 



Old Lawson's description of the skunk is alike humorous and truthful. He says: "Polecats, 

 or skunks, in America are different from those in Europe. They are thicker and of a great mam- 

 colors- not all alike, but each differing from another in a particular color. They smell like a 

 fox, but ten times stronger. When a dog encounters them they make urine, and he will not be 

 sweet again in a fortnight or more. The Indians love to eat their flesh, which has no manner of 

 ill smell when the bladder is out. I know no use their furs are put to. They are easily brought 

 up tame." 



Catesby, in his Carolina, says: "When one of them is attacked by a dog, to appear formidable 

 it so changes its usual form, by bristling up its hairs and contracting its length into a round form, 

 that it makes a very terrible appearance. This menacing behavior, however, insufficient to deter 

 its enemy, is seconded by a repulse far more prevailing; for from some secret duct it emits such 

 fetid effluviums, that the atmosphere for a large space round shall be so infected with them that 

 men and other animals are impatient till they are quit of it. The stench is insupportable to some 

 dogs, and necessitates them to let their game escape; others, by thrusting their noses into the 

 earth, renew their attacks till they have killed it; but rarely care to have more to do with such 

 noisome game, which for four or five hours distracts them. The Indians, notwithstanding, esteem 

 their flesh a dainty; of which I have eaten and found it well tasted. I have known them brought 

 up young, made domestic, and prove tame and very active, without exercising that faculty which 

 fear and self-preservation perhaps only prompts them to. They hide themselves in hollow trees 

 and rocks, and are found in most of the northern continent of America. Their food is insects 

 and wild fruit." 



Sir John Richardson states that the noisome fluid which the skunk discharges is one of the 

 most powerful stenches in nature, and so durable, that the spot where a skunk has been killed 

 will retain the taint for many days. He quotes Graham for the fact that several Indians lost 

 their eye-sight in consequence of inflammation produced by this fluid having been thrown into 

 them by the animal. "I have known," says he, in continuation, "a dead skunk, thrown over the 

 stockades of a trading-post, produce instant nausea in several women in a house with closed doors 

 upward of a hundred yards distant. The odor has some resemblance to that of garlic, although 

 much more disagreeable. One may, however, soon become familiarized with it ; for, notwith- 

 standing the disgust it produces at first, I have managed to skin a couple of recent specimens by 

 recurring to the task at intervals. When care is taken not to soil the carcass with any of the 

 strong-smelling fluid, the meat is considered by the natives to be excellent food." 



The anecdotes of persons who have suffered from ignorant attacks upon this animal are numer- 

 ous and some are laughable. I knew, some forty years ago, a Frenchman who lived on the great 

 thoroughfare between Hartford and Wethersfield, Conn., where he had a considerable farm. One 

 evening, coming along the street of Wethersfield — which, by the way, as everybody knows, is 

 renowned for its immense product of onions — on his way homeward, he saw a pretty little animal 

 running in the path before him. This was in fact a young skunk, but which the Frenchman mis- 

 took, in the dark, for a kitten. He rushed upon it, seized it, and put it in his pocket. On his 

 arrival among his family, there was a general outcry at the infernal odor he brought with him, 

 upon which he took out the little animal from his pocket, and which was evidently the cause of 

 »the disturbance. "What is it ?" said one; and "What is it?" said another; for the family were 

 all French, and were not initiated in our Yankee natural history. "I should think by the smell 

 of garlic," said the Frenchman, "that it must be a Wethersfield kitten!" 



A still better story has been often told, in which the celebrated Dr. Lyman Beecher was the 

 ■ Vol. I. — 38 



