CHAPTER XXXIII

BEASTS OF PREY--THE CARNIVORA

"One of the most striking and significant results of the study of the later Mesozoic and earliest Tertiary mammalian faunas," remarks Prof. W. B. Scott, "is that the higher or placental mammals are seen to be converging back to a common ancestral group of clawed and carnivorous or omnivorous animals, now entirely extinct, to which the name of Creodonta was given by Cope. The creodonts are assuredly the ancestors of the modern flesh-eaters, and, very probably, of the great series of hoofed animals also, as well as of other orders. From this central, ancestral group the other orders proceed, diverging more and more with the progress of time, each larger branch dividing and subdividing into smaller and smaller branches, until the modern condition is attained."

The story of the creodonts--savage marauders large and small--includes the rise of the powerful order Carnivora--the beasts of prey, whose food is the flesh of other animals. There always has been, and always will be in every department and rank of animal life, some or many species that live by preying on their neighbors; and every living thing, from monad to man, has to fear such enemies.

The essential characteristic of the Carnivores is the dentition, which is adapted to seizing, holding, biting, and cutting. The canines, rarely prominent in other groups, here become of prime importance--a dagger and hook in one--a tearing instrument. Naturally this tooth is most developed in the dogs and the bears, which have little other means of seizing and holding an animal, whereas the cat has efficient aid in its claws. The cheek teeth in this order are (typically) not flat "grinders" but angular and knife-edged, especially the foremost molars that shut past one another like scissor blades; and it is evident that such teeth are necessary to animals that must cut their food into pieces small enough to swallow, and are not concerned about chewing it. The order contains two distinct divisions, namely:

_Marine Carnivores_--Seals, sea lions, walruses. _Land Carnivores_--Cats, dogs, weasels, bears, etc.

The marine carnivores (suborder Pinnipedia, "fin-footed") have their whole organization adapted to an aquatic life, and appear to have acquired it almost from the beginning of the diverse specialization that sprang from the generalized creodonts, for nothing is known of their ancestry that connects them with the known lineage of their kin on land. The body approaches a fishlike form, and the four limbs are turned into more or less perfect paddles, or "flippers." The teeth are of the carnivorous type; the eyes are always large and prominent; and external ears are lacking except in one family.

The least modified of the three families of marine carnivora is that of the eared seals--the sea lions and fur seals of the North Pacific ocean, and southward to Cape Horn. They have kept much independence of action in the hind limbs, and are able to climb readily about the rocks of the islands and shores to which they resort in midsummer for the birth of the young. They have an obvious neck, small external ears, nostrils at the tip of the snout, and in general more characteristics like those of land carnivores, especially the bears, than have any other pinnipeds. They live wholly on fish. Several species termed "sea lions" were formerly numerous from Oregon southward to Patagonia, and on certain South Sea islands, but they have been all but exterminated except in California. These southern species, dwelling in warmer latitudes, are known as "hair" seals, because their coat lacks the warm undercoat of the northern species (_Otaria ursina_) which is the "fur" seal of commerce, and which would long ago have disappeared had it not been placed under international protection in its breeding places on islands in Bering Sea. Thither, as summer opens the ice, gather the herds that have been wandering in the ocean during the winter. The females are much the more numerous of the two sexes, and having spread all over the islands, formerly in hundreds of thousands, are collected into "harems." The "bulls" are three times the size of any of the females, and there are incessant combats between rival bulls. The young born here are strong enough to swim away with their mothers in the early autumn.

Similar in general organization, and in the freedom and usefulness of the hinder limbs for creeping on land or ice, are the walruses (Trichechidæ), of which there are two arctic species, one in the North Atlantic, and one in the seas of Alaska and Kamchatka. In old times they came as far south in winter as Nova Scotia and the coasts of Britain. A full-grown male walrus is a very bulky animal, ten to twelve feet long, and his skin is covered with a short coat of hair that in old age almost disappears, while his bulldoglike muzzle bristles with quill-like whiskers. The especial feature of the walrus, however, is the pair of great ivory tusks, often two feet or more long, which are the canines of the upper jaw. They are the tools with which the animal digs from the mud of the bottom the clams and other shellfish on which it feeds, and are formidable weapons enabling it to protect itself and its family and mates, for which the walrus shows remarkable affection and loyalty, from the attacks of the polar bear, the only enemy besides man that it has to fear.

The true seals (Phocidæ) have become still further specialized toward a completely aquatic life. Their hind limbs are extended straight behind the body, and take no part in progression, the fore flippers alone enabling them to swim and dive with ease and speed. Their strong, clawlike nails enable them to climb onto ice floes or the shore, to which they resort for rest and sunshine and to bear their young. These are usually only one, or at most two, at a birth, and in some species they have to be carefully taught how to swim, fearing the water. All of the many kinds of seals of this family are confined to the northern hemisphere, and mostly to the arctic region; but the great sea elephant, now almost extinct, lived in the antarctic, with one colony on the coast of southern California. Most seals are gregarious, and some congregate in immense herds on ice floes far from land, but the majority of species stay near shore. Seals feed chiefly on fish, of which they consume enormous quantities; some, however, subsist largely on crustaceans, especially prawns that swarm in the northern seas; also on mollusks, echinoderms, and even occasionally on sea birds.

We are now ready to turn to the land carnivores, which, by the larger opportunity, better food, and varied conditions the land affords, have advanced far beyond their marine cousins. In these more favorable circumstances, and by their struggle for a living against the powers of defense or escape of their intended prey, and the competition of one another, they have become widely diversified in organization and habits, and in some of their representatives have developed the highest intellectual and physical ability in the animal kingdom.

BEARS, DOGS, WOLVES, FOXES AND JACKALS

The bears (Ursidæ) stand lowest in the scale of rank among the Carnivora because they retain more than the others archaic characteristics in their anatomy. The family is singularly uniform--that is, all bears are much alike in their heavy bodies, broad heads, powerful limbs with "plantigrade" feet, resting the whole sole on the ground (whereas most other quadrupeds are "digitigrade," i. e., standing on their toes), and an extremely short tail, almost invisible in the coat of long hair that clothes their bodies. Distinction into species has been found difficult. An English naturalist once exclaimed that he knew but two in the whole world--the polar bear for one and all the rest for the other. At the other extreme the American systemist, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, announced in 1918 that the American brown and grizzly bears alone were divisible into eighty-eight species and subspecies, based on variations in their skulls! For ordinary readers all the big brown bears of Japan, Asia, Europe, and Canada, inclusive of the grizzlies (of which few now remain) may be regarded as one species; the polar bear, with its elongated head and body, and pure, white fur, as another; the small gray "glacier" bear of the St. Elias Alps in Alaska as another; the "blue" one of Tibet, the shaggy, long-lipped, sloth bear of India, and the miniature sun bear of Borneo, as three more; and finally the common yellowish-nosed American black bears, the Andean "spectacled" bear, and the very similar black bears of the Himalayas, as together constituting a seventh species.

All these are as alike in habits, allowing for different surroundings and food supply, as in appearance. Eating everything from nuts, berries, and insects, to fish, ground squirrels, and big game, their dentition comprises not only powerful canines, but molars capable of smashing bones. Bears are too slow and clumsy, however, to do much as big game hunters, save, perhaps, the polar giant in seizing seals, and it is therefore necessity rather than choice that reduces these really formidable beasts to the petty business of nibbling berry bushes, digging up bulbs or the nests of wasps and gophers, and tearing rotten logs to pieces in hope of finding ants and beetle grubs. The most inveterate insect hunter of the tribe is the Indian sloth, or honey bear. Sir Samuel Baker remarks that its favorite delicacy is termites, for which it will scratch a large hole in the hardest soil to the depth of two or three feet. "The claws of the forepaws are three or four inches in length, and are useful implements for digging. It is astonishing to see the result upon soil that would require a pickax to excavate a hole." Having reached the large combs at the bottom of the cavity the bear blows the dust away with a strong puff, and then draws the honey and larvæ out of the comb into its mouth by sucking in its breath.

Nevertheless bears eat a good many young and small animals, and in the neighborhood of farms steal many calves, colts, and pigs. It is an animal to be feared by men when met, although as a rule bears are inclined to run away rather than resist, except when a she-bear feels that her young are in danger. Bears are rather solitary, the males wandering about alone, the females accompanied by cubs often as big as themselves. The young, two as a rule, are born in midwinter in the family den, which may be a rocky cave or the hollow of an old tree, the center of a dense thicket or simply a bed beneath the snow. The cubs at birth are surprisingly small--not larger than rabbits--and are naked, blind, and very slow to develop; hence the mother is extremely solicitous about them, and heedlessly brave in their defense. Bears hibernate only in the coldest regions.

Allied to the bears is the large black and white "coon bear" (Æluropus), a rare, vegetable-feeding brute of eastern Tibet, which is a relic of the Pleistocene. Near it in structure is the queer Ælurus of the same region, which connects the bears with our raccoons and those other "little brothers of the bear," the kinkajous and coatis of the American tropics.

THE DOG FAMILY--WOLVES, FOXES AND JACKALS

Some of my readers may have asked themselves how the order of the families or other groups of mammals is determined--why the edentates follow the marsupials, the Rodentia come next, and so on. The reason is that their ancestors, so far as we know them as fossils, seem to have been related in a way that indicates such a succession of development in time. It is scarcely more than an indication, however, for although in describing them, or making a list, we must set the animals in a row, naturalists long ago ceased attempting to show that any linear arrangement of that kind represented the reality. The present variety among mammals (as in other classes) is the result of development along different lines from one or more points of beginning.

Throughout a long period in the early part of the Tertiary era there prevailed a class of beasts of prey, some as big as tigers, which, however, were by no means Carnivora, as we now know them, for their teeth in most cases were still of the insectivore type. These were the creodonts, of which I spoke a few pages back. They combined in their structure the features of all the different families of Carnivora, and it was not until there had developed from their stock a single family, Miacidæ, and the rest had died out, that the canine, or carnassial, teeth became prominent in their jaws, and nature found in this the right road to progress. To this anciently extinct family we may trace all the varieties of existing Carnivora. The oldest and most central stock appears to be that of the dog family (Canidæ).

The least of these are the jackals of Africa and Asia, small, active, noisy, reddish and variously marked animals like miniature wolves, which dwell in deserts and open districts, where they hide in dens during the day, and come out at night in search of mice and anything else they can get. They haunt the suburbs of towns, and do great service as scavengers, but also raid farms and villages, killing great numbers of poultry, lambs, and weakly sheep and goats by methods much like those of our American coyotes.

The coyote is a true wolf; and the wolves are connected with the jackals by a small intermediate species in India. Formerly the coyote ranged eastwardly throughout the prairie east of the Mississippi, but farmers gradually killed it off. On the sparsely settled plains, however, it survives from the Arctic Circle to the tropics in several species, and continues to maintain itself because its natural enemies have been killed off, and because it is extremely clever in dodging new perils. It is far more destructive to the ranchman's chickens, pigs, and lambs than even the big timber wolf, but, on the other hand, benefits the industry by aiding him in exterminating troublesome gophers, prairie dogs and rabbits.

The big gray wolf--the wolf _par excellence_--which our Western men usually call "timber" wolf, to distinguish it from the coyote (the wolf of the plains) is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, for despite the various names given it this fierce and capable animal is to be found throughout the northern zones of the globe, from Kamchatka, Japan, and northern India right around to Alaska. Where civilization prevails it has been killed off, yet lingers where mountains give it hiding places even in the oldest settled parts of Europe. In North America wolves abound in all the wilder parts of the West and North, contesting with skill and courage the effort of advancing civilization to get rid of them. This wolf, in its largest examples, such as the often pure white specimens of the Arctic coasts and islands (where it travels as far north as do the caribou and other game), may measure three and a half feet in length, exclusive of the bushy tail, and may weigh 150 pounds. Its color is typically rusty or yellowish gray above, more or less grizzled, while the underparts are whitish, and the tail is often tipped with black. These hues are paler in northern than in southern specimens, and in warm regions totally black races are known, one of which exists in Florida.

The wolf's mode of life is virtually that of the whole canine family, making allowances for differences in climate and circumstances. Choosing a convenient little cave among the rocks of a mountainside, or, when this is not handy, digging a burrow for themselves, a pair will establish a "den" in early summer, where presently six or eight whelps may be born; but usually only two or three survive babyhood. At this season small game is abundant, and the animals wandering around alone by day as well as by night, pick up a good living, grow fat and lazy, and are little to be feared save by the mothers of fawns or lambs. As the onset of winter fills the forests with snow, cold gales moan through the trees, and the long, dark nights enshroud an almost dead world, this peaceable disposition changes into a hungry ferocity and a force of craft and caution born of the direst need, which at last make the animal formidable to man himself. Yet actual attacks on men are much more rare than stories and traditions would lead one to think. It is at this season, when the rabbits and other small creatures are gone or hidden in hibernation, and large game must be depended on for food, that the wolves form themselves into small companies, or "packs," and assist one another. To this class of animals hunting is truly "the chase," for their method is, having found their quarry (in which the good nose for a trail and a keen hearing assist them), to keep it in sight and run it down. Having overtaken the quarry, a sideways leap enables them to thrust in the long canine, and drag on it--and the result is death unless the hunted creature is able to turn and fight off its foe with hoofs and horn.

The forests of southern Brazil harbor a long-legged, reddish species called "maned," which is a true wolf; and South America generally has several kinds of "fox dogs" (genus Lycalopex) that sufficiently make up for the absence of true wolves, as do jackals the lack of wolves in Africa and Arabia.

Foxes have long been regarded as constituting a separate genus under their Latin name Vulpes, but conservative naturalists now think they belong with the wolves in the genus Canis ("a dog"). The type is that of a smaller, more agile and delicate animal than a wolf or jackal, with a broader skull and sharper muzzle, larger ears, a longer, more bushy tail, and usually longer fur. Weaker than its wolfish relatives, though endowed with great swiftness, and used to playing the double rôle of hunter and hunted, its brain has been developed to a high degree to make up for its bodily deficiencies, and shows capacity for further development. Nevertheless the fox is not quite such a marvel of shrewdness as he is reputed to be, and fox hunters in Great Britain--under whose combination of care and chase his education has been more advanced than anywhere else--note much diversity in brain work among them.

Although the North American red fox has a different name from the typical European one it is virtually the same, and shows its skill and adaptability by continuing to live and flourish in the midst of our civilization, where it practices quite as much sly craft and success in chicken stealing as does "Reynard" on the other side of the ocean. The red fox is to be found all over the continent as far south as Georgia, and where the winters are cold his long and silky fur becomes of marketable value, especially in its darker varieties. The animal has touches of black on the tail and the legs, and this seems liable to affect the whole pelage in the North. Thus some are all black; others are black with every hair tipped with white, and are called "silvers"; others have a blackish band along the spine and across the shoulders. To these the name "cross-foxes" is given. The skins so marked bring high prices, and an extensive industry has arisen in Canada by breeding black and marked foxes in captivity, where pure color strains have been developed, whereas in nature one or more of these melanistic varieties may occur in any litter of normally red parents.

North America has three or more other species of fox, one of which, the gray fox, is common throughout the country east and south of the Appalachian heights, as far north as the lower valley of the Hudson River. It is smaller and grayer than the red fox, is more of a forest-keeping animal, and does not burrow, but makes its nest in the bottom of a decayed tree or stump, or within a hollow log. Living in a climate where small game is abundant the year round, and chicken-stealing comparatively easy, he has not been driven to the straits of getting food in winter to which the northern foxes are driven, and hence has developed less of the ingenuity and cleverness they show. On the high plains of the West dwells a small, active fox, known as the kit fox, or "swift," which feeds on the ground squirrels and mice of that region, and makes its home in a burrow (often one dug by a prairie dog), where it hibernates in winter. It is now rare and very wary.

Throughout the polar regions right around the globe is found the arctic fox in great numbers, and wandering in summer, at least, to the farthest islands, where its prey consists of lemmings, rabbits, ptarmigan and fish. This is a shy little beast, with blunt nose, short, rounded ears, a very long, bushy tail, and the soles of the feet well shod with hair, giving them a firm and warm grip on the snow and ice over which they leave tiny tracks from Labrador to Siberia. In summer its dress is brown with whitish or drab underparts; but in autumn this is replaced by a coat of long, pure white hair beneath which is an undercoat of fine wool. A small proportion, however, are never either white or dark brown, but are slate gray all the year round. In some rather southerly places the "blues" prevail, forming a local race. Such is the case in Greenland, Iceland, and the Aleutian Islands, where blue foxes are now carefully preserved and cared for in a semi-domestic condition for the sake of their valuable fur. Several small kinds of foxes occur in Asia, and in India one affords some sport with hounds. The prettiest of all are the little sand-colored, big-eared "fennecs" of the deserts of northern Africa and Arabia. No foxes tame well, nor do any of them cross with dogs as wolves and jackals constantly do, and apparently no fox blood has entered into the composition of the domestic dog.

There remain in this ancient and cosmopolitan family a considerable number of animals which from their general appearance we call "dogs." Among these is the long-bodied, short-legged, primitive "bush dog" of Guiana; the "bakoor" of South Africa; several Oriental species; and the hated "hunting dog" of Africa. The last named is a terror even to a lion. It ranges the country in swift-footed packs, dreaded by every creature of both forest and veldt, and every writer increases its reputation for both strategy and ferocity. This has led to its being killed off, until now it is common only in the remote wilderness. Formerly it was known even in Egypt, and it is the party-colored, prick-eared dog represented on the ancient mural paintings at Beni Hasan and elsewhere.

Of the Asiatic wild dogs the most familiar is that one of India called in the north "buansuah" and in the south "dhole." Like the others it is normally rusty red in color, and makes its lair in rocky jungles, whence, more often by day than by night, it makes its forays usually in packs from which even the leopard and tiger flee--just as in this country half a dozen curs will send a cougar or jaguar up a tree in fright. But it avoids settlements, and does little damage to domestic animals.

This brings us to the consideration of the origin of our domestic dogs, a matter which seems to me more simple than some authors have regarded it. This was doubtless among the very first animals to become attached to the camp or family of primitive man, and in every case, at first, at least, it would be of some local species of wolf, for anatomists agree that no admixture of any blood outside the genus Canis is traceable in the dog; and probably would be cherished or tolerated as a reserve supply of food rather than as an aid in hunting. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that when famine came and the stone ax was raised against the poor animals, those that had proved good watchers, or were the special pets of the women and children, would be the last to be sacrificed and sometimes would be saved altogether. Thus an improving and alterative selection would have begun almost from the start. Moreover, these early camp dogs would become modified by interbreeding and by the influences of captivity; and as their vagabondish owners wandered about would be crossed not only with diverse sorts of tamed dogs, but with the wild stocks of new countries; and this complication would increase as civilization extended. Nevertheless this appears not quite to complete the story. There is a quality which we recognize as "doggy," and as something distinctive. Whence came it? I am of the opinion that it is derived from one or more kinds of canine animals, exterminated by primitive man, which were more "doggy" than wolfish, and which formed in large part the stock of the first domesticated dogs. This supposition is supported by the fact that there have been found remains of a distinct canine species, allied to the Australian dingo, which was domesticated by Neolithic men, and perhaps contributed to existing varieties of the dog. The earliest Egyptian monuments show pictures of large dogs with "lop" ears--denoting one of the most striking differences between dogs and wild wolves or jackals, whose ears are invariably "pricked."

THE SOURCE OF COSTLY FURS

A descendant of the Creodonta called Cynodictis, which lived in the Eocene, or earliest of the Tertiary periods, is regarded as the forefather of the dog family, but its character is such that it might as well be said to be the progenitor of the weasel family (Mustelidæ), which may thus be suitably considered the nearest relatives of the Canidæ. These are the small, but alert, muscular and wide-awake animals whose coats, adapted to the cold regions in which most of them live, furnish us with warm and beautiful furs; hence the Mustelidæ may be called the family of "fur bearers." They resemble the dog tribe in the breadth of the skull, and in the dentition, which serves well for the wide variety in their fare; but instead of the long, high-stepping legs of the galloping dogs they have short, strong limbs adapted to creeping, digging, climbing, or swimming. The swimmers are the otters--one marine, the other a denizen of rivers and lakes. The sea otter is peculiar to our northwestern coast, where it used to be very abundant from California to Bering Sea, but is now so rare, on account of the great demand for its unequaled fur, that its pelt is worth several hundred dollars to the fortunate hunter. It is truly pelagic, rarely landing anywhere but on some outer reef or isolated rock, and eating fish, sea urchins, and crabs; and is much larger than the land otter, and with a short, flattened tail instead of the long, tapering one that characterizes the latter. Of the river otters about ten species are recognized, scattered all over the cooler parts of the world, and much alike in their four webbed feet and fish-eating habits. They are lively, playful creatures, and by their wariness, nocturnal habits, and skill in hiding their burrows, made in the bank with an underwater entrance, they are able to persist here and there in the midst of civilization.

Allied to the otters in structure are the badgers and skunks. Of the former, our badger has been killed off everywhere except in the northwest, where it still digs its deep holes in the ground for its daylight rest and partial hibernation, and finds plentiful food among the gophers, doing the ranchmen more good by destroying these pests than it does harm by its digging. The European badger differs in various ways; and there is an Oriental one, the "stinking" teledu, which illustrates the fetid odor that belongs to all of this family. This disagreeable quality is developed in the skunks into an effective weapon of defense. The food of skunks consists mainly of insects and field mice, and is everywhere so abundant that they find civilization favorable to them rather than otherwise, and remain numerous all over the country in several species, of which the familiar large northern skunk, and the small southern striped one, are best known. The skunks are confined to America, but South Africa has a very similar creature in the zorilla.

We now come to a large number of vigorous, bloodthirsty and cunning little carnivores, the terror of small game, as are the cats of larger animals, which are grouped by their similarity of structure in the "weasel" section of the family (Mustelinæ). Some are mainly terrestrial, others arboreal in habit of life. All have rather long bodies, short legs armed with strong, sharp claws, pointed heads, catlike teeth, and brains equal, if not superior, to any other carnivore. Among the terrestrial species the glutton of Europe and its analogue in Canada, the wolverine, are prominent. The wolverine is a large, shaggy, somewhat clumsy animal that seeks its prey mainly on the ground, but occasionally climbs to a low branch or an overhanging rock whence it may leap upon the backs of a deer or sheep. It displays the greatest sagacity and persistence in getting a living where life is precarious; and is so clever in robbing the trappers' lures and penetrating his "caches" that the forest people consider it hardly anything else than a devil on four legs, and charge it with deliberate malice. The voracity of its European cousin long ago became the subject of ridiculous traditions, and has given the word "glutton" to the language. Two similar, but smaller, mustelines, the tayra and the grison, inhabit Central and South America. The latter defends itself in the same manner as the skunk.

The weasels, stoats, polecats, minks, and the like form a group distinctly northern, except that one species ranges southward into the Andes. They do their work on the ground, although some are able to climb trees. Slender, lithe, sharp-clawed, secretively colored, and endowed with strength, speed and cleverness, the weasels are the scourge and terror of the ground-keeping animals, and do more than any other class of agents to restrain mice, gophers and similar nuisances. Europe and Siberia have the stoat, the ermine-weasel and the polecat, a domestic form of which is the ferret; and we have in North America several distinct weasels, as the short-tailed and the long-tailed of the East, the bridled weasel of the Pacific Coast, the black-footed ferret of the plains, and the little six-inch "mouse hunter" of the Northwest, which is the smallest carnivore known. All the northern weasels become pure white in winter when they live in a region where the snow lies continuously and the cold is steady; but south of that line they do not change color. The change from the summer brown to the winter white--when they become "ermines"--is produced by an actual loss of color in the hair; but the spring change back to brown is effected by shedding the old white hair and getting a new brown coat. In the Middle Ages ermine fur was permitted to be worn only by royalty, and later by judges on the bench. A somewhat different, and strictly American, species is the mink. It is somewhat less slender than the weasels, and is semiaquatic in habits, dwelling always near streams, where it feeds on earthworms, frogs, and fishes. Having this kind of food, and being keen-witted and secretive, it has been able to continue to exist in the midst of civilization, and the vast number of its dark pelts that come to the fur market are nearly all got by farmers' boys in traps set near home.

The most valuable of the fur bearers, however, are those that belong to the forests of the North and dwell in trees--the sables, martens, and pekans. The sable is Siberian, the marten is North European, and the pine marten and pekan are North American. The first three are hardly distinguishable, each averaging about eighteen inches in length, exclusive of the long, furry tail, and are brown, somewhat lighter on the underparts, the breast-spot of the Canadian species being orange. The body is long and supple, the legs short and the toes separate, with sharp, long claws, as becomes so expert a tree-climber. The martens exhibit great agility and grace in their movements, and live usually in trees, furnishing with a bed of leaves a hollow in a lofty decaying trunk or sometimes in a rocky crevice. Here the young are brought forth in litters of six or eight early each spring. In winter, however, they descend daily, and hunt rabbits and other prey over the snow. This is particularly true of the big Canadian pekan, or "fisher" marten, which is the least common of the tribe. These martens fade away as civilization advances toward their forest retreats, and now are to be obtained only in the wildest parts of the Canadian woods; and the effort to tame and breed them in captivity has met with little success.

CIVETS, MONGOOSES AND HYENAS

This group of Old World animals represents the product of lines of descent that had their origin very near that of the dogs, as is particularly evident in the history of the hyenas (family Hyænidæ). But between the noble courage and fidelity of the dog and the cowardly brutishness of the hyena lies a great distance in character--as it appears from the human point of view. Of course it will not do to apply our highly elaborated standards to a moral estimate of wild animal behavior, or to use seriously such terms as "cruel," "selfish," and the like, especially in the case of the predatory beasts that work hard for their captures, must kill them the best way they can, and must satisfy their own wants before yielding place to rivals or inferiors; yet we cannot help admiring certain qualities in some of them and disliking others, as if they were inspired by praiseworthy or blameworthy motives. In the character of the hyenas, thus criticised, there is nothing admirable except their extraordinary brute strength. This is shown chiefly in their big heads, where their jaws are filled with teeth of extraordinary size, and are worked by muscles that enable them to crunch the leg bones of an ox, or indent and bend thick iron, of which amazing examples are given by Selous, Neuman and other African sportsmen. Otherwise they are the meanest of brutes, hated and despised by every man and beast in the countries (Africa and southern Asia) that they afflict.

Related to them, but very different in every way are the many species of ichneumons and civets (family Viverridæ) of the same parts of the world. The ichneumons, or mongooses, are small, dark-colored, unspotted animals, varying in size from that of a weasel to the bigness of a house cat, with compact bodies and pointed muzzles. They are active, bold and predacious, living on small game of every sort, and making their homes in holes in the ground. They are noted for their animosity to reptiles, and in ancient Egypt were protected as "sacred" because they killed asps and hunted for and ate crocodiles' eggs. The old term "ichneumon" has disappeared, however, in favor of the term "mongoose," which is the name of the East Indian species famous for snake killing. It is able, by its astonishing quickness, to spring upon and kill a cobra, even when that deadly snake is prepared to strike at its little foe. Mongooses were colonized in Jamaica and other West Indian islands years ago to destroy the rats that were a plague in the sugar plantations; but they presently turned their attention to the poultry as easier game, and became a greater nuisance than the rats. These fierce little snake killers constitute the "herpestine" section of the family.

The "viverrine" section contains the civets, which have elongated bodies, terrierlike heads, small, round, five-toed feet with imperfectly sheathed claws, long, often bushy tails, and coats of rough dark-colored hair marked with blackish stripes, bars, or squarish blotches. The species are numerous, and varied, those of central Africa, called "genets," resembling weasels. They include the linsangs of the East Indies, with soft, fawn-colored fur; several East Indian species inhabiting trees and going by the name of "tree cats" and "toddy cats," one of which is domesticated as a mouser and pretty pet by the natives; and the black binturong of the Orient, which is the only animal of the Old World, not a marsupial, that has a prehensile tail.

The distinctive peculiarity of the true civet cats is the possession of a pair of open pouches in the groin holding an oily substance having an intense musky odor and known as "civet." This is present in the five Oriental species, but is most copious in the civet cat of northern Africa, which on this account is kept captive and occasionally relieved, by the aid of a small spoon, of its civet for which perfumers will pay a high price.

Madagascar possesses a remarkable animal in the foussa, or fossane, which is nearly the size of our puma, has a weasellike head and a very long tail, and is a fierce nocturnal marauder. It is classed with the Viverridæ, but stands intermediate between them and the cats.