242 The American Naturalist. [March, 
THE SKUNK AS A SOURCE OF RABIES. 
By W. WADE. 
Doubtless many of the readers of the NATURALIST have 
heard the story that the bite of a skunk can convey rabies. I 
first heard it some years since in the form of an inquiry from 
a distinguished physician in London; and to an old fox-hunter, 
who has known of hounds by the dozens being skunk-bitten 
with no subsequent ill-effects, the story was exceedingly 
ridiculous. But when my friend stated that Dr. John H. Jane- 
way, a surgeon in the U. S. Army, was said to have given the 
story his endorsement in a New York medical journal, the 
matter became immediately worthy of most serious considera- 
tion, my friend suggesting that there might have been some- 
thing in the environments of the skunk, at the time Dr. Jane- 
way wrote, to account for the marvelous exception, and I at 
once set to work to investigate what was known on the matter. 
. Immediately I was involved in a maze of contradictions, no 
two stories agreeing. No belief of the story could be found 
anywhere but in Texas, the Indian Territory, and adjacent 
districts. Even in southern Kansas no such belief was found. 
Then in some cases it was the skunk, Sui generis, that had 
this power, while again it was only one particular variety of 
the skunk, the “ hydrophobia cat.” The vulgar idea was that 
any skunk, rabid or non-rabid, was capable of conveying in- 
fection of rabies, while more intelligent observers held that 
only a rabid skunk had this power, but even these seemed to 
hold that there was special danger of skunks being rabid, or 
that the virus conveyed by their bite was more potent than 
that from any other rabid animal. Again, instances were cited of 
men dying as the result of a skunk bite; in one case after 
many months of lingering illness, which most certainly could 
not he rabies, or another case of a man exhibiting rabic symp- 
toms after a skunk bite but recovering on copious bleeding, 
and evidently there was no rabies there. Again, the New 
