THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
farer mad. Yet in the early days hyenas swarmed all over 
South Africa, not only because game was abundant, but be- 
cause the Kaffirs never destroyed them, holding them sacred 
as the means of disposing of their dead, since only their chiefs 
and young children were buried —in the ground. 
The Fur Bearers 
There now present themselves a company of small carniv- 
ores, whose coats are of that soft and thick pelage which we 
call jur, — the martens, weasels, badgers, ratels, skunks, otters, 
and their kin of the family Mustelide. Their structure in 
general is near the civet type; and the ‘‘testimony of the rocks ” 
shows that if this line be not an ancient branch from the civet 
stock, at any rate it has sprung from the same root. In the 
Upper Eocene formations of France, for example, are found 
such small, tall-legged animals as the genus Plesictis, which 
seem to be generalized civet cats (viverroids) with features, 
especially as to the teeth, now distinctive of the Mustelide; 
and after them appeared others in which these features were 
more developed, until in the Miocene and Pliocene eras came 
true weasels, badgers, otters, etc., at first in Europe, but soon 
spreading all over the northern hemisphere. None of these 
was of an existing species, or even as a rule of any existing 
genus, but there is no doubt of their near relationship. The 
family falls into three sections: the martens, grisons, weasels, 
and wolverines (Mustelinee); the badgers, skunks, etc. (Me- 
line); and the otters (Lutrine). They constitute 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 them- 
selves warm amid arctic frosts, make our most beautiful furs, 
as sable, marten, mink, ermine, and the rest. The sable is 
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