26 The Stoat and its ways. 
Young stoats must kill everything they meet with  indis- 
criminately to learn the arts of killing and providing for them- 
selves. Not one of their victims in a hundred is ever seen by the 
keeper, unless they are taken flagrante delicto. When the young 
are full grown, but still hunting with their dam, she may be 
distinguished at sight from them by her russet-brown colour, for 
the young are lighter, and when dead by her claws, teeth, and 
mamnuoe. “The surest way of trapping her, I regret to say, is to 
use one of her own olispring as a bait. Stoats are so quarrelsome, 
greedy, and suspicious of one another that they never under any 
circumstances assemble in battalions for additional security, like 
rats. When men have been attacked by numbers, they have 
simply been the members of a family pack. When two or more 
are caught fighting they can be easily approached, if a man has 
a very strong stomach. At such times they are so indifferent to 
other external matters that two may be killed at once with a 
blow from a walking-stick. Fighting stoats, when only two are 
present, always turn out to be males, in my experience. Old doe 
rabbits have been known to recover their dead young on such 
occasions, and to send both stoats to “the right about,” either 
well “kicked,” or soundly beaten and ‘“‘ trampled on.” A heavy 
doe rabbit is not always “ the inoffensive ” creature she looks, and 
against a rat, stoat, or weasel, stealing her young, can suddenly 
develop a pugnacity and quickness of resource which is as 
charming and amusing as it is rarely beheld. 
> 
The “chatter” or “shrill whistle” of the stoat is a very 
unfamiliar country sound. It may be heard when the dog stoats 
are getting ready for a fight, or the female calls her young to food 
she has taken, or when for a time she has lost sight of them in 
the thick cover. While hunting, the stoat is silent, in my 
experience ; but while following in packs, when the chase is 
catching up the quarry, young stoats are said to “ give tongue.” 
I cannot sayy for I have never seen a pack under these particular 
circumstances. ‘The mother gives forth a cry continuously when 
she returns and finds her young have been destroyed in her 
absence; and, overcome with trouble, runs aimlessly about, 
regardless of her own danger. At such times her “continuous 
whistling’ can only be compared to a “singing mouse,” 
