The Stoat and its ways. aye 
Few gamekeepers, in my experience, believe that the winter- 
white coat of the stoat is the roval ermine. It is not generally 
known. either, that the older stoats are the whiter their winter 
coats become in hard seasons, even in England. The only 
ermines I have personally examined have all been old dogs. 
There is also an albino stoat. From youth to age, summer and 
winter, it is always perfectly white without the black tip to its , 
tail, and has the so-called “pink eyes.” A winter-white weasel, 
which is not albino, is a very rare thing, even in the North of 
Scotland, but this cannot be said of the stoat. The published 
records of enormously large stoats, from 19 to 245 inches, are not 
to be depended on. An 18-inch stoat is an old giant. I have 
good reason to believe that both the polecat and the martencat 
are mistakenly called “stoats,’ by the badly informed, and at 
times records of both these species are published as those of the’ 
stoat. In the same way the stoat in Ireland is frequently called 
the weasel, because the weasel is rare there. 
Stoats have few natural enemies—foxes, cats, and hawks on 
land, and the pike in the water, are the only ones of which I have 
any sufficient modern records. ~The polecat and marten may now ° 
be ignored as such, as the former is so thinly distributed at present . 
as practically to have no effect upon the increase or decrease of 
stoats; and the latter is a rare wanderer, worth recording, in 
most counties in England. I have been informed it has been 
taken in the neighbourhood of Lincoln lately. The larger owls 
may occasionally pick up a young stoat in the gloaming, but I 
never remember finding their bones in the many casts I have 
examined. Foxes certainly kill stoats at sight, and dead ones 
have been found in the food stores in their earths. Cats also, at 
times, destroy a few, especially when they have kittens. Large 
and heavy rats will sometimes test all the stoat’s powers and , 
g resources when they get into a place convenient for fighting ; but 
even if it loses its own life, from wounds, after the fray, the stoat 
never gives in till the battle is;wwon. Hawks also destroy a few 
of them, but not infrequently the stoat gets the better of the bird 
if it does not seize its lithe little quarry well forward. One old 
friend saw a sparrow hawk swoop successfully at one and rise, 
but it paid for its temerity with its life. The stoat tore open the 
