CLASS I. MAMMALIA: 
ORDER 5, CARNIVORA. 
29T 
tlie day. In many of tlie New England villages, tlie perfume of the skunk and the cry of the 
whippoorwill are a frequent summer-evening serenade. The animal lives in the woods and thick- 
ets, but not infrequently approaches the habitations of men, and even domiciliates himself in the 
barns, where he makes sad havoc among the eggs and chickens. We have even heard of one that 
got into a cellar one night, and being discovered by the house-maid — who, by the way, was brave 
as a lion in defense of the threshold — she fell upon him and killed him. Such was the stench which 
followed, that the woman was violently ill for several days, and the meat, bread, and vegetables 
in the cellar were so impregnated as to be utterly ruined. 
Old Lawson's description of the skunk is alike humorous and truthful. He says: "Polecats, 
or skunks, in America are different from those in Europe. They are thicker and of a great many 
colors* not all alike, but each differing from another in a particular color. They smell like a 
fox, but ten times stronger. When a dog encounters them they make uriue, and he will not be 
sweet again in a fortnight or more. The Indians love to eat their flesh, which has no manner of 
ill smell when the bladder is out. I know no use their furs are put to. They are easily brought 
up tame." 
Catesby, in his Carolina, says: "AVhen one of them is attacked by a dog, to appear formidable 
it so changes its usual form, by bristling up its hairs and contracting its length into a round form, 
that it makes a very terrible appearance. This menacing behavior, however, insufficient to deter 
its enemy, is seconded by a repulse far more prevailing; for from some secret duct it emits such 
fetid efiluviums, that the atmosphere for a large space round shall be so infected with them that 
men and other animals are impatient till they are quit of it. The stench is insupportable to some 
dogs, and necessitates them to let their game escape ; others, by thrusting their noses into the 
earth, renew their attacks till they have killed it; but rarely care to have more to do with such 
noisome game, which for four or five hours distracts them. The Indians, notwithstanding, esteem 
their flesh a dainty ; of which I have eaten and found it well tasted. I have known them brought 
up young, made domestic, and prove tame and very active, without exercising that faculty which 
fear and self-preservation perhaps only prompts them to. They hide themselves in hollow trees 
and rocks, and are found in most of the northern continent of America. Their food is insects 
and wild fruit." 
Sir John Richardson states that the noisome fluid which the skunk discharges is one of the 
most powerful stenches in nature, and so durable, that the spot where a skunk has been killed 
will retain the taint for many days. He quotes Graham for the fact that several Indians lost 
their eye-sight in consequence of inflammation produced by this fluid having been thrown into 
them by the animal. " I have known," says he, in continuation, " a dead skunk, thrown over the 
stockades of a trading-post, produce instant nausea in several women in a house with closed doors 
upward of a hundred yards distant. The odor has some resemblance to that of garlic, although 
much more disagreeable. One may, however, soon become familiarized Avith it ; for, notwith- 
standing the disgust it produces at first, I have managed to skin a couple of recent specimens by 
recurring to the task at intervals. When care is taken not to soil the carcass with any of the 
strong-smelling fluid, the meat is considered by the natives to be excellent food." 
The anecdotes of persons who have suffered from ignorant attacks upon this animal are numer- 
ous and some are laughable. I knew, some forty years ago, a Frenchman who lived on the great 
thoroughfare between Hartford and Wethersfield, Conn., where he had a considerable farm. One 
evening, coming along the street of Wethersfield — which, by the way, as everybody knows, is 
renowned for its immense product of onions — on his way homeward, he saw a pretty little animal 
running in the path before him. This was in fact a young skunk, but which the Frenchman mis- 
took, in the dark, for a kitten. He rushed upon it, seized it, and put it in his pocket. On his 
arrival among his family, there was a general outcry at the infernal odor he brought with him, 
upon Avhich he took out the little animal from his pocket, and which was evidently the cause of 
the disturbance. "What is it ?" said one; and "What is it?" said another; for the family were 
all French, and were not initiated in our Yankee natural history. "I should think by the smell 
of garlic," said the Frenchman, "that it must be a Wethersfield kitten!" 
A still better story has been often told, in which the celebrated Dr. Lyman Beecher was the 
ToL. I.— 38 
