138 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. V 
of northeastern India and Assam, is Arctonyx 
collaris, having near relatives in the farther East. 
By recent authors the skunks, the honey-badgers, 
(Mellivora), the Cape of Good Hope polecats 
(Ictonyx), and the small Oriental burrowers of the 
genus Helictis, are also put into this section. Our 
American species have a genus of their own named 
Taxidea, of which there are two species, Taxzdea 
americana, our common Northern form, and the 
Mexican badger, tejon or tlacoyote (7. derlandiert), 
but the latter is probably only a geographical variety 
of the former. Everywhere these animals agree 
in having long fur, without much ornament, in 
their choice of open, somewhat elevated habitats, 
in exhibiting courage and voracity, in nocturnal 
disposition, in making their homes in burrows, and 
in possessing perineal glands secreting a fetid 
liquor, which in some species, and especially at 
the breeding season, makes them extremely offen- 
sive to human nostrils. 
So much for the badger’s place in nature. 
In regard to the habits of our American badger 
not much is to be said, due both to the fact that 
the animal is so secretive that we have small op- 
portunity to study it, and to the further circum- 
stance that its life is exceedingly simple. In such 
favorable regions as the dry plains that stretch 
from the Rio Grande to the North Saskatchewan, 
the animal is still numerous. Besides the countless 
herds of buffaloes, antelopes, and the lesser, but 
