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 vre 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. 
I 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 
I the polecat to be aware that the emitted contents of 
I a gland*, inoffensive to itself, should be offensive 
to all its pursuers? — I ^di^, inoffensive to itself, 
because I cannot believe that our Creator would 
I condemn an unoffending animal to produce its own 
I punishment, by means of a smell which never leaves 
l it — whether it roam up and down as a solitary 
animal, or whether it have a partner and a family 
I 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 
