CHAPTER XV 
THE FUR-BEARERS AND THEIR 
CULTURE | 
THERE now present themselves a company of 
small carnivores of unusual interest in every 
aspect—the martens, ermines, wolverines, bad- 
gers, skunks, etc.,—all of the weasel family 
Mustelide. ‘‘They constitute,” as I have 
written elsewhere, ‘‘an army of sharp-toothed, 
keen-witted, bloodthirsty .devourers of the 
small life of the world, doing in the North 
the police work which in the Oriental tropics is 
committed to the civet-cats and mungooses. 
These are the animals whose coats, acquired to 
keep themselves warm amid arctic frosts, make 
our most beautiful furs, as sable, marten, mink, 
ermine, and the rest. The sable is Siberian, 
the marten is North-European, and its Ameri- 
can brother is the pine-marten, or ‘sable’ of the 
Canadian forests. The three are searcely dis- 
tinguishable, each averaging about eighteen in- 
ches in length, plus seven or eight inches of tail, 
242 
