THAT FAMOUS ESSENCE PEDDLER. iQ'j 



ing to meditate for a moment, he apparently came to 

 the conclusion it was "no good," and marched off. 

 Later on in the season, his visits to the cottage prov- 

 ing too numerous to be interesting, he was caught in 

 a steel trap and shot — an ill-advised way, 

 as I shall hereafter show, of disposing of 

 him. Dr. Mer- 

 riam, in his ad- 

 mirable mono- 

 graph on the 

 skunk,* tells of one 

 which peeped in the 

 door of his museum, climbed 

 up on the sill, scrutinized 

 him with the keenest of black 



eyes, and then began to stamp and scold saucily, 

 finally backing out and into a beech tree near by, 

 which so surprised him that he whirled about tail 

 up, growled excitedly, and scampered off among the 

 bushes. 



The skunk makes frequent visits to the farmhouse, 

 around by the kitchen way, but usually at seasons 

 when insects, particularly grasshoppers and beetles, 

 are scarce. I never knew him to attack a rat, but I 

 have seen frequent evidences of his destruction of field 



* Vide Transactions of the Linnsean Society, vol. i. 



