regarded as a remedy of singular effectiveness for asthma, as already 

 stated. 



The breeding and rearing of skunks^ for their skins, has recently 

 engaged the attention of enterpi'ising speculators in the United States ; 

 who would make far more out of the other, far more useful and import- 

 ant, parts of the animal than they could from the fur, if they were 

 thoroughly acquainted with its history and its qualities. 



The lion, the tiger, the leopard, the hyena, the jaguar, the croco- 

 dile, the boa-constrictors and the anacondas, possess, respectively, 

 mighty powers of offence and aggression. T venture, nevertheless, to 

 say, that a skunk, single-handed, could put any one of those ferocious 

 monsters to flight. 



How wonderful and mysterious are the provisions of nature, 

 which thus invests small and weak animals with defensive attributes 

 sufficiently powerful to lesist the attacks of the strongest, and protect 

 them from aggression and the danger of extinction. Eiven the "fretful 

 porcupine," with its bristling array of dangerous spines, would be obliged 

 to flee in terror from the resistless armament of the skunk. 



Every living tiling has its pecular province and its wisely assigned 

 spliere of usefulness in the great economy of Nature ; and as I have 

 briefly endeavoured to prove, even the skunk — whose name is 

 erroneously the popular synonyne of useless repulsiveness — is neither 

 an uninteresting nor unimportant item in the grand and attractive 

 volume of creation. Even tlie skunk is deserving of a commemorative 

 and descriptive page in the beautiful and improving classics of Natural 

 History — the investigation of which science, I may be permitted to say 

 to an audience like the one before me — is one of the most delightful 

 and instructive studies which can engage the attention of the human 

 mind. 



