Refersing to my previous remarks on the destruction of Shanghai's cats for the sake of their pelts, and the possible danger of a plague of rats in this city as a result, I did not, perhaps, give full consideration to a factor in this connection that might te of no little importance. This is the presence in this city of considerable numbers of another enemy of rats and mice, namely the mink.
Along with the skins of zats to be seen hanging up in shops on Avenue Edward VII, as previously described, are usually quite a number of skins of minks. In China the mink is an animal with most unusual habits for a member of the weasel family, Mustelidæ, to which it belongs. In all other parts of the world where minks are found they are creatures of the wilds, shunning the abodes of men, and giving fur hunters as wide a berth as possible. But, while these animals also occur in the wilds of China, they are far more prevalent in areas occupied by human habitations, being found actually in the very hearts of great cities, such as Peiping and Shanghai, where they hide during the day in drains and the eaves of houses, coming out at dusk to forage for food. years ago when I was living in Tien-Shih-kai, President of s their tutor at the time. that some animal was making nightly raids on their ickes runs and pigeon coops. Knowing that I was a zoological collector, they asked my father if he could get me to do something to help them in the matter. I visited their compound and, after an inspection, set a number of traps at the mouths of drains in the yards. Next morning they brought back my traps with no fewer than four minks that had been caught in them.
Only recently I have received a letter from a friend in Peiping describing an animal which had made off during the night with some dead birds he had left in a room, intending to skin them next day and, from his description, I have no doubt that the culprit wasa mink. The other day a Shanghai resident described to me two animals which he saw playing like kittens on his lawn before dusk, and again, from his description, I am sure they could only have been minks. I have seen these animals, sometimes even in broad daylight, running across or along the sides of streets in Shanghai, in Taiyuan fu in Shansi, and in Tientsin, as well as in the open country in the immediate vicinity of these and other cities in China As far as I have been able to make out the main reason for minks thus becoming city-in China is that they find in such s an abundant food supply in the way of rats and mice with, of course, fairly frequent opportunities of adding chickens, ducks or pigeons to their menus.
In the north the Chinese name for the mink is huang-shu-long, which means the "yellow-rat-wolt" What it is called by the Chinese in the Shanghai area I do not know, but most foreigners speak of it as the "golden weasel," a not inapt name. In the days when certain foreigners in Shanghai maintained a pack of hounds for hunting on foot in the surrounding country, one of the many animals that formed their quarry was the mink, It was most often put up along the banks of er doubtless, it secured food in the way of frogs, fish, mussel shells, crabs and The mink close relation of the stoat and the polecat, forms of both of which occur in the northern provinces of China, Mongolia and Mauch not south of the Yellow River It is int A to note that the ferret, used as a icher in England, is a domestic variety of the polecat. The word stoat s another name for the ermine, from which the valuable fur of that name is derived. The polecat's fur is also of value, being known in the fur trade as fitch. By polecat I do not mean the skunk, which, I believe. mes receives me in Amer England. Europe and Asia Several very closely similar have been described from various of China, all of them classified as species of the Siberian mink (Mustela siberia), whic nek t Dr valuable work, a and Mongoli; the se forms of minks are Mustela sibirica fontontierii, occuring i north; Mustela sibirica moupinensis, in the west: and Mustela sibirica davidiana, found in our region and southward, all having originally been described as distinct species by the French mamm:
Milne i in Shanghat, easel.shaped s long and s being proa long t body together y but taper Its head s rather flat, with ears partly hi len by fur which, he ever, is not very long. On this account, am. because of its p e colour, the pelt of the Chi nese minks are nearly as valuable as are those of the American European minks. In colour the Chinese pelts range from a yellowis! or rusty brown to a pale yellow o sandy-buff, according to the season of the year and the part of the ca rom which come. The further north the paler they are as a rule, while the thick winter pelts are always lighter than those of summer. In all cases the muzzle is more or less black, the lips and chin being 1 male Chinese mink measures two feet or more in tota length.
In China there are two. other members of the weasel family that might easily be mistaken for minks by the uninitiated. These are the so-called Alpine weasel (Mustela altaica, of the i and west, and the C asd (Mustela altaica kathiah Hodgson) of the south uth and southwest, both being found usually in the higher mountainous are shape and colour th
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