50 
bear them; they are acute and adapted to digging, strong, compressed, 
and little curved ; the palmar padded area is indifferently separated into 
three or four smaller pads. 
The white marking exists in almost endless diversity of extent and 
detail ; the most constant pattern is a sharp, narrow frontal stripe, and a 
broad nuchal area, from which diverge obliquely a pair of stripes toward 
or to the tail. The hairs of the tail are usually all white at the base; 
there is a white tuft at the base of coarser and looser hairs than the gen- 
eral cover of the tail. The same coarse white hairs are disposed in irreg- 
ular bundles in various places along the tail, exceeding the softer dark 
hairs in length ; they are sometimes seven or eight inches in length. 
Dr. Coues is of the opinion that there is a tendency to increase of 
white according, in a measure, to specifi-d geographical areas. In the 
south Atlantic and Gulf States, the white is at a minimum, the stripes 
almost wanting, frontal stripe a mere trace, and the nuchal spot reduced 
or broken. Throughout the west, and in British America, prolongation 
of the stripes to the tail, or even to its end, is the rule, the stripes grad- 
ually separating from a vertebral stripe into which the nuchal stripe is 
prolonged. Accompanying this color of the western forms, is a bushier 
tail, its width equal to or greater than its length. 
Various cases of this kind have been recognized as species under the 
specific titles mesomelas, varians, macroura, ete. 
A decrease of size with latitude is observable. Florida specimens, full 
grown, are notably smaller than New England skunks, some not exceed- 
ing thirteen or fourteen inches. 
Distributton.—The Skunk is found in entire temperate North America, 
north to Hudson’s Bay and Great Slave Lake, south into Mexico, where 
its range overlaps that of the White Backed Skunk, Conepatus mapurito. 
It is usually common, and in some districts abundant. From the nature 
of the animal, they are obviously less affected by the settlement of the 
country than their inherently wary and secretive carnivorous allies, 
which are often nearly exterminated as civilization advances. The 
Skunk, however, is often more abundant in frontier regions than in the 
unsettled parts of a country. Throughout British America, New Eng- 
land, the middle States, and some of the southern States, M. mephitica is 
the only species of the sub-family Mephitine known to occur. In most 
of the west and part of the south, it ranges with Spilogale putorius. The 
extreme south-west may possess the three species found in the United 
States. 
History.—Under the name of “ Polecat,” ““Chinga,” “Skunk,” “ Weasel ” 
(Pennant), and even “ Wnfan du diable” (Charlevoix), the Skunk ap- 
