CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 6. CARNIVORA. 
291 
THE EOEOPBAN BAD6EE. 
legs are short and muscular; the body broad, flat, and compact, and about two feet four inches 
long; the head is more or less prolonged; the snout pointed; the ears small, and the tail short. 
Beneath the anus there is an aperture of considerable size which opens transvei'sely, and exudes 
from its inner surface a greasy or oleaginous matter of very offensive odor. The same formation 
is observed in many other genera of carnivorous mammals, though the qualities of the substance 
secreted differ according to the species. In the civets and genets, for instance, its smell is so 
pleasing as to entitle it to the rank of perfame ; while in the Moufettes, on the contraiy, its odor 
is so extremely fetid as to have acquired for them, above all other animals, the generic name of 
Mephites^ translated by the strong English term of Stinlcards. In America we call them Skunks, 
a term which everybody's experience has defined without the aid of a dictionary. 
The hide of the badger is amazingly thick and tough ; the hair uniformly long and coarse over 
the whole body, and trailing along the ground on each side as the animal walks. The badger 
and its congeners offer a strange intermixture of colors, which is seen in no other mammal, except 
those of the genera (rulo and Mephitis, which approximate so nearly to it in many other respects : 
in general, the darker shades are found to predominate upon the back and upper parts of the 
body, and the lighter below ; but in the animals above mentioned this general rule is reversed, 
and it is the light shades which occupy the back and shoulders, while the dark ones are sjpread 
over the breast and abdomen. The head of the badger, for instance, is white, except the region 
beneath the chin, which is black, and two bands of the same color, which rise on each side a 
little behind the corners of the mouth, and after passing backward and enveloping the eye and 
ear, terminate at the junction of the head and neck. The hairs of the upper part of the body, 
considered separately, are of three different colors — yellowish white at the bottom, black in the 
middle, and ashy gray at the point ; the last color alone, however, appears externally, and gives 
the uniform sandy-gray shade which covers all the upper parts of the body : the tail is furnished 
with long coarse hair of the same color and quality, and the throat, breast, belly, and limbs are 
covered with shorter hair, of a uniform deep black. 
