_-_- * The Presidential Address to the L.N.U. for 1905. 
2HESSTOAT AND ITS. WAYS. 
BY 
REY. E. ADRIAN WOODRUFFE-PEACOCK, F.L.S* 
Of our four British mustelines—taking them in order of size 
from the largest downwards, the martencat, polecat, stoat and 
weasel—the most important on account of its daily depredations 
is the stoat. Every man’s hand has been against it for over a 
century, and it still flourishes exceedingly. If it does not remain 
in undiminished numbers in those parts of England where the 
whole area is strictly preserved for game, yet it exists in such 
quantities that immigration is ever filling up the gaps which 
systematic trapping makes in any district. A gamekeeper has 
well written of it:—‘ The stoat has been able to escape extermi- 
nation, simply because it is a migratory animal. If it were its 
habit to live in colonies like the rabbit, the last would long since 
have been extirpated. Its very solitariness has proved its refuge 
-from such a fate. Stoats, indeed, accept as their family motto 
the policeman’s advice, ‘Move on!’ and this has been their 
salvation.” 
That under peculiar circumstances they will quite suddenly 
disappear from a given neighbourhood is well known to a few 
naturalists. The fact has been noted in print, but no satisfactory 
reason has been assigned as the cause; and yet there is no diffi- 
q culty about an explanation. An old and observant keeper 
suggested the right theory to me many years ago. His native 
dialect was more picturesque than any words of mine can be :— 
“ There’s not been a rabbit or bird taken by a stoat round these 
‘parts this summer. There aint none about. The fact is, a 
-murrain took ’em all off this spring. They were botherin’ me 
strangely on both sides of the ’coy—i.e., his duck decoy—wi’ my 
1 early ducklings; but wi’ all my traps I didn’t catch one. Then, 
suddenly, the old rats began their tricks, an’ I went for ’em. 
Whilst I was ratting I found two stoats’ nests, wi’ young an’ old 
both dead. There were five young in one an’ seven in tother, an’ 
‘the old mother’ in both cases—all as dead as nits.” The 
