Word: civet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...waters rose, hills became islands crowded with panicky beasts. In the topmost branches of submerging trees, baboons and monkeys clung like lumpy brown fruit. Snakes swam blindly in circles. Guinea fowl, who are inept flyers, paddled around vainly like ineffectual ducks. Civet cats, porcupines, ant bears, rabbits, wart hogs, lizards, boomslangs, and many bushbucks of many types crowded together on bald hilltops. During the day the equatorial sun beat down mercilessly, and birds of prey swooped in for unprecedented feasts. There are few baby monkeys or baboons-most have been eaten, some by their own species. The desperate monkeys gnaw...
...Chanel No. 5, not all the smells that waft up to the Great Nose are pleasant. To "fix" the perfume by uniting other ingredients, perfumers use such sour or fetid-smelling substances as musk, castoreum (made from beavers' testicles), ambergris (a secretion in the sperm whale intestine), and civet glands. Explains Beaux: "Pepper and salt don't taste pleasantly when taken alone, but they enhance the taste of a dish." Beaux gives each essence the nose test because some scents will last after a week of exposure, while others, for some unknown reason, will last only a few7...
...many a euphemizing U.S. furrier, a skunk is not a skunk at all. It is a "genuine civet cat," "Alaska sable" or "black marten." For four years, the Federal Trade Commission has been trying to get Congress to outlaw fancy names for common furs, last week finally won out when President Truman signed such a bill. Under it, the FTC will issue a "Fur Products Name Guide," which furriers will have to obey, e.g., black Manchurian dogs will be known as black Manchurian dogs, and not as "Belgium lynx" or "black poiret...