THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 4] 
ears, their prominent, glistening, bead-like eyes, and 
the curving, snake-like motions of the head and neck 
being very noticeable. They looked like blood-suckers 
and egg-suckers. They suggested something extremely 
remorseless and cruel. One could understand the 
alarm of the rats when they discover one of these 
fearless, subtle, and circumventing creatures thread- 
ing their holes. To flee must be like trying to escape 
death itself. I was one day standing in the woods 
upon a flat stone, in what at certain seasons was the 
bed of a stream, when one of these weasels came un- 
dulating along and ran under the stone upon which I 
was standing. As I remained motionless, he thrust 
out his‘wedge-shaped head, and turned it back above 
the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot; then he 
drew back, and presently went his way. These wea- 
sels often hunt in packs like the British stoat. When 
I was a boy, my father one day armed me with an old 
musket and sent me to shoot chipmunks around the 
corn. While watching the squirrels, a troop of wea- 
sels tried to cross a bar-way where I sat, and were so 
bent on doing it that I fired at them, boy-like, simply 
to thwart their purpose. One of the weasels was dis- 
abled by my shot, but the troop was not discouraged, 
_ and, after making several feints to cross, one of them 
seized the wounded one and bore it over, and the 
pack disappeared in the wall on the other side. 
Let me conclude this chapter with two or three 
more notes about this alert enemy of the birds and 
lesser animals, the weasel. 
A farmer one day heard a queer growling sound in 
the grass ; on approaching the spot he saw two weasels 
contending over a mouse ; each had hold of the mouse 
pulling in opposite directions, and were so absorbed in 
