VIII THE SKUNK, CALMLY CONSIDERED 243 



It is sable only in artificial hue, and probably came 

 from Connecticut; but it is a good, warm, hand- 

 some fur for all that, and there is no occasion to 

 gird at its real origin. It seems to me that the 

 use of the skins without dyeing, employing their 

 natural contrast of white and black, might serve 

 admirably in certain goods, as robes ; but this is 

 rarely if ever seen. If the reason is that the prej- 

 udice against the name is too great to be over- 

 come with the average purchaser, several better 

 euphemisms than the false and meaningless 

 "Alaska sable" might have been chosen by the 

 furriers. Nobody knows the source of the word 

 skunk, but it is probably an early Canadian French- 

 English shortening and corruption of the Abenaki 

 Indian term secancu or the Huron scangaresse. 

 The Crees of the Canadian Northwest called the 

 animal seecawk ; but a better trade name would 

 have been chinga, by which the animal became 

 known to the early European naturalists by speci- 

 mens from French sources in the Mississippi 

 valley. 



The pelts are now worth from fifty cents to one 

 dollar and a half to the trapper. The business at 

 best is not one calculated to make the practitioner 

 popular in fastidious society ; and reminds one of 

 the force of the somewhat coarse maxim formerly 

 quoted in admonishing a person not to spread 

 abroad home-scandals, — " Let every man skin 

 his own skunk ! " 



