224 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 
manifest considerable affection for those who have 
the care of them. He says: 
“From some I removed the scent-bags, but the 
greater number were left in a state of nature. 
None ever emitted any odor, although a couple 
of them, when half-grown, used to assume a pain- 
fully suggestive attitude on the too near approach 
of strangers. ... These same skunks, when I 
came within reach, would climb up my legs and 
get into my arms. They liked to be caressed and 
never offered to bite.” 
One particularly clever youngster the Doctor 
named Meph, and used to carry asleep in his coat- 
pocket while driving about the country on his 
daily professional errands. “After supper,” he 
writes,! “I commonly took a walk, and he always 
followed, close at my heels. If I chanced to walk 
too fast for him, he would scold and stamp with 
his fore feet, and if I persisted in keeping too 
far ahead would turn about, disgusted, and make 
off in an opposite direction; but if I stopped and 
called him, he would hurry along at a sort of am- 
bling pace, and soon overtake me. He was par- 
ticularly fond of ladies, and I think it was the 
dress that attracted him; but be this as it may, he 
would invariably leave me to follow any lady that 
chanced to come near. 
“We used to walk through the woods to a large 
1In the Transactions of the Linnean Society of New York, 
Vol. I, December, 1882, p. 74. 
S 
