PUTORIUS KUMINKA. 



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easy but dangerous feasts on domestic fowls. ... I have observed 

 for several years the presence of a number of these Weasels in a 

 grove near a farm-yard well stocked with poultry, which they never 

 appeared to enter, though repeatedly visited by minks and skunks. 

 Indeed, I am inclined to think that, notwithstanding their occasional 

 predatory inroads, they should not be killed when living permanently 

 about meadows or cultivated fields, at a distance from the poultry; 

 for they are not less destructive to many of the farmer's enemies in 

 the fields. Meadow -mice are certainly the greatest pests among 

 mammals in northern Illinois; and of these the Weasel destroys great 

 numbers. I am informed that, upon the appearance of a Weasel in 

 the field, the army of mice of all kinds begins a precipitate retreat. 

 A gentleman of Wisconsin related to me that, while following the 

 plough, in spring, he noticed a Weasel with a mouse in its mouth, 

 running past him. It entered a hollow log. He determined to watch 

 further, if possible, the animal's movements, and presently saw it 

 come out again, hunt about the roots of some stumps, dead trees, and 

 log-heaps, and then enter a hole, from which a mouse ran out. But 

 the Weasel had caught one, and carried it to the nest. Upon cutting 

 open this log, five young Weasels were found, and the remains of a 

 large number of mice, doubtless conveyed there as food. . . . 



" Stacks and barnfuls of orain are often overrun with rats and mice; 



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but let a Weasel take up his residence there and soon the pests will 

 disappear. A Weasel will, occasionally, remain for some time in a 

 barn, feeding on these vermin, without disturbing the fowls. But it 



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is never safe to trust one near the poultry-yard, for, when once an at- 

 tack is made, there is no limit to the destruction. When the animal 

 has entered stacks or barns, it has the curious habit of collecting in a 

 particular place the bodies of all the rats and mice it has slain; thus 

 sometimes a pile of a hundred or more ol their victims may be seen 

 which have been killed in the course of two or three nights. " :;: 



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* The (Quadrupeds of Illinois injurious and beneficial to the Fanner. I>y Robert Kennieott. 

 Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1857, Agriculture, 1858, pp. 104-106. 



