382 Dr. Buchanan on the Wound of the Ferret. 



even dead, to a young Ferret that has never seen one before, it 

 throws itself upon the body and bites it with fury j and, if the 

 rabbit be alive, the Ferret takes it by the neck or by the nose, and 

 sucks its blood." In the ' Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles'*, 

 Ferrets are described as being of a most sanguinary nature : " It 

 is even more the blood than the flesh which they seek for their 

 nourishment." MM. Geoffroi St. Hilaire and Fred. Cuvier, the 

 authors of the splendid work ' Histoire Naturelle des Mammi- 

 feres/ repeat the same opinion : — " The Ferret, in attacking a 

 rabbit, seizes it by a part of the head, masters it, and sucks its 

 blood, and, as soon as satisfied, falls asleep." 



As the above quotations refer chiefly to the rabbit, and as it was 

 possible the Ferret might not practise the same mode of attack 

 upon that animal as upon the rat, I resolved to put the matter to 

 the test of experiment. My first trial was made with a full-grown 

 male rabbit, and a Ferret nine months old, which had never seen 

 a rabbit before. The Ferret immediately commenced the attack, 

 but it was always repulsed, and ultimately obliged to retire al- 

 together, the rabbit adopting a very remarkable mode of defence ; 

 for whenever the Ferret came near, he sprung right upwards, 

 and came down with the whole force of his hind legs upon the 

 head of his assailant. I now sent off the rabbit, to be tried with 

 the old Ferret which had killed the two rats, as mentioned above. 

 The distance was too great to admit of my being present ; but I 

 received a full report of what passed from the friend already 

 mentioned, whose zeal in natural science led him to take an in- 

 terest in the experiment. The rabbit pursued the same tactics 

 in defending himself as before ; and so long as he had free space 

 for his evolutions he came off victorious, as the Ferret could 

 never get an opportunity of laying hold of him. They were 

 therefore put together into a box. There the Ferret soon succeeded 

 in seizing the rabbit across the root of the nose, shaking him, as 

 a dog does, from time to time, and never letting go the hold till 

 the rabbit ceased to live. Instead, however, of despatching him 

 in the course of a few seconds, there was a full half -hour from the 

 commencement till the end of the struggle. It was agreed by 

 all present, that while the Ferret held on by means of her teeth, 

 she sucked the blood flowing from the wound. The dead rabbit 

 being sent to me for examination, I found the vessels as full of 

 blood as usual ; the brain had not been injured ; the bones of the 

 nose and orbit had been pierced ; but the main injury done had 

 been to the eyes, which were completely disorganized and full of 

 blood. 



It thus appeared that the idea of the Ferret sucking blood was 



* Article Martes, division Putois. 



