e sea"; close to the Latin _sal_, the sea.

Many names of animals are adapted from words in the ancient language of
the natives in whose country the creatures were first discovered. Puma,
jaguar, tapir, and peccary (from _paquires_) are all names from South
American Indian languages. The coyote and ocelot were called _coyotl_ and
_ocelotl_ by the Mexicans long before Cortes landed on their shores.
Zebra, gorilla, and chimpanzee are native African words, and orang-utan is
Malay, meaning Man of the Woods. Cheetah is from some East Indian tongue,
as is tahr, the name of the wild goat of the Himalayas. Gnu is from the
Hottentots, and giraffe from the Arabic _zaraf_. Aoudad, the Barbary wild
sheep, is the French form of the Moorish name _audad_.

The native Indians of our own country are passing rapidly, and before many
years their race may be extinct, but their musical, euphonious names of
the animals they knew so well, often pleased the ear of the early
settlers, and in many instances will be a lasting memorial as long as
these forest creatures of our United States survive.

Thus, moose is from the Indian word _mouswah_, meaning wood-eater; skunk
from _seganku_, an Algonquin term; _wapiti_, in the Cree language, meant
white deer, and was originally applied to the Rocky Mountain goat, but the
name is now restricted to the American elk. Caribou is also an Indian
word; opossum is from _possowne_, and raccoon is from the Indian
_arrathkune_ (by further apheresis, coon).

Rhinoceros is pure Greek, meaning nose-horned, but beaver has indeed had a
rough time of it in its travels through various languages. It is hardly
recognisable as _bebrus_, _babbru_, and _bbru_. The latter is the ultimate
root of our word brown. The original application was, doubtless, on
account of the colour of the creature's fur. Otter takes us back to
Sanskrit, where we find it _udra_. The significance of this word is in its
close kinship to _udan_, meaning water.

The little mouse hands his name down through the years from the old, old
Sanskrit, the root meaning to steal. Many people who never heard of
Sanskrit have called him and his descendants by terms of homologous
significance! The word muscle is from the same root, and was applied from
a fancied resemblance of the movement of the muscle beneath the skin to a
mouse in motion--not a particularly quieting thought to certain members of
the fair sex! The origin of the word rat is less certain, but it