Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/212

170 secretion of the Skunk is only emitted from the glands when the animal is attacked or irritated, an odour so powerful as above described cannot fail to have become to a great extent distributed about its own pelage.

The odour of musk is frequently a purely sexual character in animal life. Girard has always observed that the musky odour which is emitted by two species of Sphinx moths is peculiar to the males. During the season of love a musky odour is emitted by the submaxillary glands of the Crocodile, and pervades their haunts. Dr. Junker found that the deck of the steamer on which he travelled up the Blue Nile was for some days pervaded by a musky odour after a wounded Crocodile had been despatched thereon. According to Mr. Ramsay, writing on the Australian Musk-Duck (Biziura lobata), the smell which the male emits during the summer months is confined to that sex, and in some individuals is retained throughout the year; he had never, even in the breeding season, shot a female which had any smell of musk. In the Australian Echidna, "during the rut, both sexes produce a most conspicuous odour, which is probably destined