THE WOLVERINE. 493 



hand of man, and the pertinacity it shows, after one day 

 for deliberation, in gaming possession Of it. Mr. P. De 

 Graff, of New -York, who passed one winter in the Peace 

 River country, has this to say concerning this peculiarity: 



' ' The Carcajou must be very hungry indeed if he will 

 touch a baited trap the first night, and so it is with game 

 left in the woods. About the time we built our camp, I 

 killed a Moose, and hung the head on a branch of a tree, 

 out of the reach of wild animals. Some time afterward, 

 I thought I would test what I had heard about this habit 

 of the Carcajou, and knocked the head down after a fall of 

 snow. Next day, I found a Carcajou had been within three 

 feet of it, but had not touched it. Then I turned the head 

 over, and the result was the same; but three days after this 

 the head was gone. We did not consider the experiment 

 conclusive, for we found that traps which had been set 

 early in the morning sometimes contained a Carcajou next 

 morning, but as we did not make a practice of visiting our 

 traps every day, we could not always be sure about it; yet 

 we concluded that generally they were too suspicious to 

 touch a trap as long as the scent of our tracks remained." 



Mr. Ross, quoted in Coues' "Fur-bearing Animals," 

 vouches for the following: 'An instance occurred within 

 my own knowledge in which a hunter and his family hav- 

 ing left their lodge unguarded during their absence, on 

 their return found it completely gutted — the walls were 

 there, but nothing else. Blankets, guns, knives, kettles, 

 axes, cans, and all the other paraphernalia of a trapper's 

 tent, had vanished, and the tracks left showed that a Wol- 

 verine had been the thief. The family set to work, and by 

 carefully following up all his paths, recovered, with some 

 trifling exceptions, the whole of the lost property." 



Steel-traps and dead-falls are commonly used in the 

 capture of the Wolverine, although when he has once 

 escaped from a trap, or been frightened by the fall of a log, 

 some other means must be devised for his subjection. In 

 time they even become suspicious of poisons which have no 

 taste or smell, and it is the same with castoreum or any 



