202 Habits and Food 



told me he could have picked them up in pints on the sea 

 coast, northwards of Whitehaven. They are the most vora- 

 cious animals of the kind I have ever seen : they will feed 

 on a variety of weeds, as dandelion, groundsel, docking, and 

 foxglove (Digitalis), seeming to like variety. I found one 

 feeding on the red-flowered foxglove, and in trying those I 

 had confined with its leaves, I found they fed as freely on it 

 as on dandelion or docking. 



31st. A caterpillar of A'rctia Caja has formed its silken 

 nest; but it progresses slowly to the chrysalis state. 



In this county, two thirds of this month have been adverse 

 to the entomologist, and the latter part only has been any 

 thing like favourable. 



Art. III. On the Habits and Food of the British Species of the 

 Genus Mustela. By W. L. of Selkirkshire. 



The Mustela vidgdris, Whittret, or Common Weasel, is (as 

 shown p. 175.) oddly defined by Dr. Johnson to be "a 

 small animal that eats corn and kills mice." * The common 

 weasel lives almost altogether on the smaller species of mice, 

 with, at times, it may be, a small bird, or eggs in the season. 

 It often clears the corn stacks of mice, but he would make a 

 queer sort of farmer who could believe it eats corn. 



The Stoat, or Black-tailed Weasel (Mustela erminea) preys 

 upon birds of all kinds and of every size, and on hares, 

 rabbits, and indeed every thing it can master ; and there are 

 strange instances of its boldness, address, and activity. An 

 old man, of observing habits, told me, that one Sunday, while 

 reading in the fields, he observed a hare pass swiftly, and 



* Johnson, learned as he was, seldom ventured deep into etymology : 

 probably he had little time to spare, and was not likely to be tempted in 

 this case. He derives the name from the ancient Saxon, or from the Dutch. 

 J. M., whose unlucky mistakes in Vol. V. p. 77. made such a roiv in Vol. V. 

 p. 294 — 297., gets into another error in Vol. V. p. 78., and derives it from 

 white rat. The creature called a whittret is not at all like a rat, neither 

 is it white. Your Morayshire correspondent r (Vol. V. p. 295.) seems 

 pleased to quote his countryman, Dr. Jamieson, for a better etymon. My 

 old and learned friend has here (may I be allowed with all deference to 

 say so) been led away from the point by his fondness seemingly for the 

 original root of our mother tongue, to go to the old Norse to seek for it ; 

 showing, in this instance, a greater leaning to books than to nature. Had 

 he consulted the latter first, I make no doubt that his natural good sense 

 and sagacity would have led him at once to see that whittret was merely 

 the change of the original descriptive name, whitethroat ; for the coat and 

 colours of the weasel, or whittret, do not change like those of the stoat : 

 it is always of a chestnut brown, with a white breast and throat. 



