But cunning as are these arctic foxes, there is one animal which seems to outdo even them in its instinct, as one may almost call it, for avoiding all danger, and especially snares, traps, or pitfalls of any and every description. This is the celebrated glutton or wolverine, an animal which, as it is not only never to be taken itself, but enjoys nothing so much as destroying all traps that it finds set for other animals, is the very despair of the trapper. It belongs to the weasel family, but in form and general appearance is more like a bear than one of these animals, being stout in the body, with long large limbs and shaggy fur, whilst it walks on the soles of its feet, which is an ursine mode of progression. Its tail, however, is a conspicuous feature, being thick and bushy, though short. In size it surpasses every other member of the family to which it belongs, so that it is able to make so large and strong an animal as the beaver its prey. It is even said that it will occasionally attack and overpower some of the larger species of deer, dropping upon them from out of the branches of trees, and then tearing at their throats. Whether this is true, however, I do not know, nor, for our present purposes, does it much matter, for it is only from the standpoint of its cunning, or, perhaps one should rather say, of its intellectual competition with man, that I am going to discuss the wolverine here. It is not that the trapper has any wish to catch him—not for his fur, at least, which is worth little or nothing. The wolverine is not wanted, and would be let alone if he would let other people alone, but this he will not do. Nothing pleases him better than to come across a trapper engaged in his occupation, for then he knows that for some time to come he can have meat without the trouble of killing it. Where he lives—in the great pine forests of North America—the marten lives, too, and the fur of the marten is very valuable indeed. The trapper goes through the woods setting a long line of traps, and when once the wolverine has come upon this line, he follows it day by day, and never leaves off doing so till he has destroyed every trap, eaten the bait, and sometimes the marten that he finds inside it. These traps are not the steel ones that are set for the foxes, nor are they the spring guns either. The marten’s skin is so valuable and, at the same time, so small, that the trapper does not want it to be injured anywhere. The skin of a fox that has been shot in the head or caught by one of the legs, is almost as valuable as if it had not been damaged at all, but it is not the same with the marten. His skin is wanted intact—without a flaw upon any part of it. The trapper, therefore, makes a curious trap of branches—or “poles,” as he calls them—which are set in the ground, so as to make a sort of little chamber or wigwam, which has only one way into it, and across that way a noose, or something, is arranged—I am not quite sure what; they never tell one