196 THE COMMON CIVET. 



to eating it. It requires but little drink. " Dr. Stubbes, in his 

 Jamaica Observations, saith that the civets will live above a month 

 without drinking, as he himself once tried on one that he kept j 

 but that if they drink once a month they will yield more civet, 

 and so if they be fed with fish."* 



The voice of the civet resembles that of an enraged dog. In 

 its wild state it is prolific, but it never breeds in captivity. 



Numbers of civets are kept in Holland for the purpose of 

 procuring from them the well known drug or perfume, which 

 bears their name. Each is confined in a cage so narrow that 

 it cannot turn itself. When a sufficient time for the secretion 

 has been allowed, the end of the cage is opened, and the poor 

 animal is pulled back by the tail and securely held in that 

 position, while a small spatula or spoon is introduced into the 

 pouch, from which the contents are carefully scraped out, and 

 then put into a bottle properly stopped. This operation is 

 repeated twice or thrice a week, about a drachm being collected 

 each time. The civet procured at Amsterdam is considered 

 more valuable than that imported from the Levant or India, 

 being freer from adulteration : its average value is about fifty 

 shillings an ounce 5 but, like everything else, it is liable to a 

 fluctuation in price. 



Civet used to be much employed in medicine 3 but at present 

 its chief use is in the scenting of pomatum and similar articles. 

 The nobles and fops of Shakespeare's time thought it indis- 

 pensable to their persons : 



" The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet." 



As You Like It, Act III. Scene 2 ; 



and it was more highly esteemed from its supposed sedative 

 influence over the mind. Our poet, nevertheless, makes Touch- 

 stone speak of it contemptuously as " the very uncleanly flux 

 of a cat," (Ibid. iii. <2) ; and King Lear more than once scoffs at 

 it. The odour of civet more resembles that of amber than of 

 musk, with which it has been frequently confounded, and its 

 medical properties are in some respects different. 

 * Blount's Natural History (1693), p. 12. 



