THE WEASEL* 



293 



not such opinions ought to be condemned and 

 rejected as totally unfit for a work of merit. 



Booksellers may engage a person to write for 

 them ; but, depend upon it, his zoological lucubra- 

 tions will be a mere ignis fatuus, unless he shall 

 have studied previously, in the field of Nature, the 

 habits of those animals which he has undertaken 

 to describe. And where are we to find a naturalist, 

 nowadays, who has not had too much recourse to 

 books ? — books which are replete with errors and 

 absurdities, merely for want of proper investigation 

 on the part of those who have written them. 



Many of the weasel tribe have the power of 

 emitting a very disagreeable odour from the pos- 

 terior part of the body. 



We are gravely informed, in the American 

 Biography of Birds ^ that the polecat has this faculty 



given him by Nature as a defence." 



And pray, at what old Granny's fireside in the 

 United States has the writer of this, picked up such 

 an important piece of information? How comes 

 the polecat to be aware that the emitted contents of 

 a gland^, inoffensive to itself, should be offensive 

 to all its pursuers ? — I say, inoffensive to itself, 

 because I cannot believe that our Creator would 

 condemn an unoffending animal to produce its own 

 punishment, by means of a smell which never leaves 

 it — whether it roam up and down as a solitary 

 animal, or whether it have a partner and a family 

 of young ones to provide for. 



* I use gland in the singular number for the sake of brevity ; but the 

 animal has two glands. 



u 3 



