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utilitarian view of the question, in the hope that something may 
be done before it is too late to check the indiscriminate destruc- 
tion of the native beasts and birds of prey. One of those 
predatory animals, the fox (canis vulpes), I may pass over. 
There is no fear of foxes being exterminated in this district for 
some time to come, either by fair or foul means. The badger 
(meles taxus) and polecat (mustela putorius) may, I suppose, 
be considered extinct hereabouts, although I can recollect when 
the latter animal was quite common ; and, indeed, I remember, 
when a boy, seeing a nest of young ones dug out of a hole in our 
own garden. The same fate which has befallen the polecat seems 
likely soon to overtake the stoat (I. ermine), a more useful 
animal, in my opinion, and one deserving of more consideration 
than he has hitherto met with. I look upon the stoat as our 
best protector from the legions of rats which now threaten, not 
only to eat us out of house and home, but even to pull down the 
very houses in which we live. The country simply swarms with 
rats. Every ditch and burn is infested by them, and therefore, 
though there is an endless number of different ways of killing or 
driving them away from houses, all those various expedients, 
however ingenious, are in vain except as means of obtaining 
temporary relief. As soon as one batch of rats is killed off or 
expelled, a fresh lot are ready to take up the quarters they have 
vacated. The only effectual check upon the rat is the stoat, who 
hunts him down with deadly pertinacity in his favourite haunt— 
the ditch or running stream. Although the rat can swim like a 
fish, and can thus escape from a dog or cat, he has a poor chance 
of saving his life when pursued by a family of stoats. As I have 
seen myself in the days when stoats were plentiful, they hunt the 
rat as a pack of foxhounds hunt the fox, and can boast of a much 
larger percentage of kills. The stoat is undeniably an enemy to 
game, and is therefore very naturally an object of hatred to the 
gamekeeper. It would be unreasonable, I think, to blame the 
keeper for waging war against an animal which he looks upon as 
a dangerous enemy to the game which it is his duty to protect. 
Admitting, however, that the stoat is a poacher, and destructive 
to game, is there not good reason for believing that the rat is as 
bad? Would not a few stoats be a lesser evil than legions of 
rats infesting every brook and every hedgerow, and doubtless 
robbing many a partridge or pheasant’s nest ? When we consider 
the large number of rats that-two or three stoats would kill in 
