How pretty his face and head!  How fine and delicate his teeth, like a weasel’s or a cat’s!  When about a third grown, he looks so well that one covets him for a pet.  He is quite precocious, however, and capable, even at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to your sense of smell.

No animal is more cleanly in his habits than he.  He is not an awkward boy who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his fur hints the weapon with which he is armed.  The most silent creature known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone fence.  He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for hens’ eggs and young poultry.  He is a confirmed epicure, and at plundering hen-roosts an expert.  Not the full-grown fowls are his victims, but the youngest and most tender.  At night Mother Hen receives under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her feathers.  In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended by only two or three of all that pretty brood.  What has happened?  Where are they gone?  That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery.  Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and one by one relieved her of her precious charge.  Look closely and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground.  Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him.  The birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his plundering propensities.

The secretion upon which he relies for defense, and which is the chief source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose.  It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction.  Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity.  It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle.  It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities.  I do not recommend its use as eyewater, though an old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied.  Hearing, one night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and no doubt much annoyed at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his wrath full in the farmers face, and with such admirable effect that, for a few minutes, he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge himself upon the rogue, who embraced the opportunity to make good his escape; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by fire, and his sight was much clearer.