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, Taxidea 

 americana, our common Northern form, and the 

 Mexican badger, tejon or tlacoyote ( 7! berlandieri), 

 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 



