168 FERRET FACTS AND FANCIES. 



such purposes. The ferret is a scrappy fellow 

 and many much larger animals will run from it 

 rather than fight. It may be that the smell or 

 odor of a ferret strikes terror to them — it does 

 to rats. 



Some objection is made to those breeding, 

 handling and selling ferrets on the ground that 

 they are often unlawfully used. No doubt such 

 is the case. No one surely is so narrow 

 minded as to say that dogs should not be raised 

 or sold because some use them during closed 

 season. Neither would they say that fishing 

 tackle or gun manufacturers should close their 

 plants because some that bought are using them 

 unlawfully. Ferrets are used unlawfully to 

 some extent, but indications are that the law is 

 generally as well observed by the user of ferret 

 as those who hunt with dog and gun or gun 

 alone. 



The native American animal that most re- 

 sembles a ferret is the weasel wiiich animal is 

 also bold and bloodthirsty. The w^easel is dif- 

 ferent from the ferret in that it can not, or at 

 least is hard to manage and train to hunt game. 

 Ferret raisers say that the weasel and ferret 

 will not cross. Even should later experiments 

 prove successful it is doubtful whether such a 

 "breed" would be an improvement or otherwise. 



