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.