FURRY FRIENDS WITH FINE SKINS. II5 



pletely gutted — tlie walls were there, but nothing else. 

 Blankets, guns, kettles, axes, cans, knives, and all the 

 other paraphernalia of a trapper's tent had vanished, 

 and the tracks left by the beast showed who had been 

 the thief. The family set to work, and by carefully 

 following up all his paths, recovered, with some tri- 

 fling exceptions, the whole of the lost property." 



The most extraordinary habit of this strange ani- 

 mal is thus recounted by Elliott Coues : " We need 

 not go beyond strict facts to be impressed with the 

 wit of the beast, whom all concede to be ' as cunning as 

 the very devil.' ... It is said that if one only stands 

 still, even in full view of an approaching carcajou " 

 — the Indian name for the wolverene — " he will come 

 within fifty or sixty yards, provided he be to the 

 windward, before he takes alarm. . . . On these and 

 similar occasions he has a singular habit, one not 

 shared, so far as I am aware, by any other beast what- 

 ever: he sits on his haunches and shades his eyes 

 with one of his fore paws, just as a human being 

 would do in scrutinizing a distant object. The carca- 

 jou, then, in addition to his other and varied accom- 

 plishments, is a perfect skeptic, to use this word in 

 its original signification. A skeptic, with the Greeks, 

 was simply one who would shade his eyes to see more 

 clearly. 



The handsome fur of the wolverene brings a high 



