ANIMALS. The group of animals whose pelts are utilized as fur garments or ornaments, forming the carnivorous family Mustelidw. This family, which includes, besides its typical weasels (3Iustelinse), the skunks (MephitinT), the badgers (3felinm), the otters (Lutrinm), and the sea-otters (Enhydrinte), the honey-badgers, ratels, etc., is world-wide in its spread outside of Australia. It is in the North ern Hemisphere, however, that the family is now most numerous and well represented; and it is in response to the demand of the cold winters of the subarctic regions. to which the most valuable of these animals are confined, that their coats have become the warm felts which mankind finds so serviceable and attractive. All are small ani mals, the largest (the wol•erene) being only about three feet long. Their bodies are in most cases slender, their legs rather short, their heads round, with very powerful jaws and teeth, and their tails (except in the skunks) are rather short. Great strength, nimbleness, and courage characterize them, and ninny exhibit a blood thirst beyond that of any other carnivore: never theless, they have been tamed. Weasels have always acted as mousers in the East, and were so used in ancient Greco-Roman civilization. Ferrets still serve as vermin-catehers, and otters have been taught to fish, while badgers were formerly used in cruel sport. Most of them are terrestrial and live in burrows of their own dig ging. but sonic are arboreal. They feed upon small mammals, birds, birds' eggs, fish, crusta ceans, and insects; and all possess, in a greater or less degree, anal glands, from which they can discharge at will (sometimes shooting it a long distance) an acrid fluid, which is intensely of fensive to the nostrils and mucous membrane of other animals. The chase of the leading members
of this family has long been and still is an im portant industry on the frontiers of Europe and North America, and thousands of pelts have been gathered annually without exterminating any of the race, though the habitats of ninny species have been much reduced. Statistics of the trade in furs in London show that during the last century the receipts of pelts there of Mustelidn alone, from North America exclusively, amounted to about 3,250,000 sables, 1,500,000 otters, 100 000 wolverenes, 3,000,000 minks, 25,000 sea otters, 500,000 skunks, and 500,000 badgers, be sides an unknown number of ermines, fishers, etc. "The scientific interest with which the zoologist, as simply such, may regard this family of animals, yields to those practical considera tions of every-day life which render the history of the Muustelidx so important." Consult au thorities mentioned under MAMMALIA, especially Cones, Par-Bearing Animals (Washington, 1877). See BADGER; ERMINE; FERRET; FISHER; MAR TEN; OTTER; POLECAT; SABLE; SEA-OTTER; SKUNR ; WEASEL; WOLVERENE; and similar titles.