44 THE TAIGA, OR CONIFEROUS 



animals are stated to defoliate completely the trees 

 they attack. 



As regards the carnivores, the special features of the 

 northern forests are the relative poverty in true cats, 

 so abundant in tropical forests generally, and the 

 wealth of arboreal animals of the weasel family, which 

 are most abundant in temperate latitudes, and take 

 there the place of the true cats and civets elsewhere. 

 The bears also are characteristic of temperate forests, 

 though not confined to them. 



There is a close resemblance between the carnivores 

 of the American and Siberian taigas. Thus in both are 

 found lynxes, the common wolf, the common fox, bears, 

 martens, the glutton, and among less purely forest 

 forms, weasels, stoats, minks, and badgers. In Siberia, 

 especially in the south, the tiger is sometimes found, 

 while in the Canadian taiga the puma {Fdis concolor) 

 does not occur, although it is common in the coniferous 

 forest of the Rocky Mountains. The wild cat {Felis 

 catus) of the wooded parts of Europe does not occur in 

 the Siberian forest, while it is altogether absent from 

 America. An animal found in the Canadian forests, 

 but with no Old World representative, is the skunk 

 {Mephitis mephitica), a member of a group charac- 

 teristic of South America, and the only one which 

 ranges far north. 



The lynxes are represented by the common lynx 

 (Felis lynx) in Siberia, and by a closely related species 

 (F. canadensis) in the woods of Canada. They are 

 expert climbers, and are true forest animals, but the 

 Canadian form is stated to feed chiefly on hares and 

 birds of the grouse family, so that it must find its food 

 largely on the ground. The common wolf is not 

 specially fitted for forest life ; it lives either in the 



