850 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



known raptorial character; the jaws are worked by enormous 

 masses of muscles covering all the sides of the skull. The fore- 

 head is low, and the nose is sharp; the eyes are small, pene- 

 trating, cunning, and glitter with an angry green light. There 

 is something peculiar, moreover, in the way that this fierce face 

 surmounts a body extraordinarily wiry, lithe, and muscular. 

 It ends in a remarkably long and slender neck, in such a way 

 that it may be held at right angles with the axis of the latter. 

 When the creature is glancing around, with the neck stretched 

 up and the flat triangular head bent forward, swaying from 

 one side to the other, we catch the likeness in a moment — it is 

 the image of a serpent." 



The thugs of India claim to be devotees of the Goddess of 

 Destruction; and profess, therefore, that it is their duty to kill as 

 many human beings as possible. The Weasel is the Thug of 

 the Wild World. While other animals may kill to excess for 

 the gratification of appetite, the Weasels alone seem to revel in 

 slaughter for its own sake, to find unholy joy in the horrors of 

 dying squeak, final quiver, and wholesale destruction. Gifted 

 with tremendous strength and activity; at home in the tree 

 top, under the snow, on the earth, under ground, or in the 

 water; keen of wits, tireless of wind and limb, insatiably cruel 

 and madly courageous, they are all too well equipped for 

 their chosen Herodian task. 



The Weasel preys on every kind of bird and beast that it 

 can master, and this means everything from turkey and 

 Rabbit down to tomtit and Shrew. On the list of its prey 

 we find recorded all kinds of domestic poultry, all wild birds 

 that it can catch, Rats, Mice, Squirrels, Chipmunks, etc. It 

 is the most villainous of murderers when it finds an open way 

 to the chicken house. 



Bachman tells" of 40 well-grown fowls having been "killed 

 in one night by a single Ermine. Satiated with the blood of 

 probably a single fowl, the rest, like the flock slaughtered by 

 the Wolf in the sheepfold, were destroyed in obedience to a 

 law of nature, an instinctive propensity to kill. We have 



» Quad. N. A., 1849, Vol, II, p. 58. 



