tip of the tail black all the year round, which seems at first thought 

 an apparent oversight on Nature's part and doomed to attract un- 

 wished-for attention to its wearer, but it has just the opposite 

 effect; namely, to disguise the whereabouts of the rest of the ani- 

 mal by its own conspicuousness. Doubly possible does this result 

 become when we take into account the elasticity of the slender 

 form which may lie in any direction whatsoever from the very 

 prominent tail. 



It is, first of all, to this elasticity that the ferocious creature 

 is indebted for his marvelous ability as a hunter. Because of it he 

 can work his way into any burrow, no matter how small the en- 

 trance, or how complicated and numerous the passageways, and can 

 follow the smallest of his prey in its windings through the nar- 

 rowest crack or crevice. Another weapon of hardly second impor- 

 tance is his highly developed sense of smell, which both locates his 

 victim for him at the start and enables him to keep its trail in the 



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