Short-tailed Weasel 857 



"Stacks and barnfuls of grain are often overrun with 

 Rats and Mice; 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. 



"Indeed I am inclined to think that notwithstanding their 

 occasionally predatory inroads, they should not be killed when 

 living permanently about meadows on cultivated fields at a 

 distance from the poultry." 



The Weasel, then, like so many of our carnivores, will eat food 

 any living thing it can master, but probably counts on Mice as 

 its steady diet the year round. 



This is one of the species that supply the famous Ermine fur 

 fur of commerce, but it has not the enormous value that one 

 sees ascribed to it in reckless print. Not several dollars, but a 

 few cents, are the usual equivalent of a skin. The value is 

 so low that few trappers think them worth skinning. 



I am told by D. A. Boscowitz, the fur-dealer of Victoria, ermine 

 B. C, that at the London fur sales, in Lampson's, March, 

 1906, 80,000 and odd Ermine were sold. The highest price 

 was 7 shillings and sixpence (^1.80) a skin for prime white 

 Siberian without yellow tint. Prime American and Canadian 

 skins brought only 4 shillings (96 cents). Other grades ranged 

 from that down to sixpence (12 cents) for third-class. 



