69 
MEPHITIS M^PHITICA. 
By the time the eyes are open, they are covered with a beautiful 
coat of glossy hair. The young females develop sooner than the 
males, attaining their stature in ten months, while the males are 
not full-grown until they are a year and a half old. It is noted that 
in every litter one or the other sex predominates in numbers, there 
being rarely half of them males and the other half females.”* 
Subfamily MEPHITIN^E. 
MEPHITIS MEPHITICA (Shaw) Baird. 
Skunk; Polecat; “ Alaska Sable." 
The Skunk is very common in the clearings and settled districts 
bordering this region, and is found, sparingly, throughout the Adiron- 
dacks. 
He preys upon mice, salamanders, frogs, and the eggs of birds that 
nest on, or within reach from, the ground. At times he eats carrion, 
and if he chances to stumble upon a hen’s nest the eggs are liable to 
suffer; and once in a while he acquires the evil habit of robbing the 
hen-roost. Still, as a rule, Skunks are not addicted to this vice, and 
it is with them very much as it is with dogs and cats; for every now 
and then a dog will get into the habit of killing sheep, and a cat of 
killing chickens and sucking eggs, and yet we do not wage a warfare 
of extermination against them, collectively, on account of the sins of 
a few of their number. 
Of all our native mammals perhaps no one is so universally abused, 
and has so many unpleasant things said about it, as the innocent sub- 
ject of the present biography; and yet no other species is half so val- 
uable to the farmer. Pre-eminently an insect eater, he destroys more 
beetles, grasshoppers, and the like than all our other mammals to- 
gether, and in addition to these devours vast numbers of mice. 
He is not fond of extensive forests, but seeks the clearino-s and 
o 
pastures that surround the habitations of man, and not infrequently 
* Fur-bearing Animals, 1877, pp. 182-183. 
