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 



' In the Transactions of the Linnean Society of New York, 

 Vol. I, December, 1882, p. 74. 



