Note 61 — Secondly, Of Beasts.[45]

The Voyages mention, beside the quadrupeds above named, also the skunk (ségankoo of Rasles’ Dict., l. c.); the musquash (mooskooéssoo of Rasles, l. c.), for which see also p. 53 of this; otter; marten, “as ours are in England, but blacker;” sable, “much of the size of a mattrise, perfect black, but ... I never saw but two of them in eight years’ space;” the squirrel, “three sorts,—the mouse-squirril, the gray squirril, and the flying-squirril (called by the Indian assapanick).” Our author’s mouse-squirrel, which he describes, is the ground or striped squirrel: probably the “anequus, a little coloured squirrel” of R. Williams, l. c.; and the anikoosess (rendered suisse) of Rasles, l. c. The mattrise of our author is, according to him, “a creature whose head and fore-parts is shaped somewhat like a lyon’s; not altogether so big as a house-cat. They are innumerable up in the countrey, and are esteemed good furr.”—Voyages, p. 87. The sable is compared with the mattrise, at least in size; and the name is perhaps comparable with mattegooéssoo of Rasles, l. c.; but this is rendered lièvre. Wood adds to this list of our quadrupeds, mistakenly, the ferret; and R. Williams, the “ockquutchaunnug,—a wild beast of a reddish hair, about the bigness of a pig, and rooting like a pig;” which seems to answer, in name as well as habits, to our woodchuck, or ground-hog.