musk-oxen at once form a close circle, with the calves and young
stock in the centre. That deadly ring of lowered heads and sharp
horns, all hung precisely right to puncture and deflate hostile
wolves, is impregnable to fang and claw. The arctic wolves know
this well. Mr. Stefansson says it is the settled habit of wolf
packs of Banks Land to pass musk-ox herds without even provoking
them to "fall in" for defense.

Judging by the facts that Charles L. Smith and the Norboe brothers
related to Mr. Phillips and me around our camp-fires in the
Canadian Rockies, the wolverine is one of the most cunning wild
animals of all North America. This is a large order; for the gray
wolf and grizzly bear are strong candidates for honors in that
contest.

The greatest cunning of the wolverine is manifested in robbing
traps, stealing the trapper's food and trap-baits, and at the same
time avoiding the traps set for him. He is wonderfully expert in
springing steel traps for the bait or prey there is in them,
without getting caught himself. He will follow up a trap line for
miles, springing all traps and devouring all baits as he goes.
Sometimes in sheer wantonness he will throw a trap into a river,
and again he will bury a trap in deep snow. Dead martens in traps
are savagely torn from them. Those that can not be eaten on the
spot are carried off and skilfully cached under two or three feet
of snow.

Trapper Smith once set a trap for a wolverine, and planted close
behind it a young moose skull with some flesh upon it. The
wolverine came in the night, started at a point well away from the