THE WEASEL. 231 



safely diaw the conclusion that the weasel does not at all times 

 make an Attempt upon fowls which are within its reach. Last 

 spring, my rumpless fowl, mentioned in these Essays, was killed by 

 a weasel in broad daylight ; and I may add an instance of a farmer's 

 pigeon-cot being in jeopardy by a three weeks' visit from the 

 weasel. About a year ago, my worthy tenant, Mr Wordsworth, of 

 Walton village, remarked that the interior of his pigeon-cot was 

 every now and then in commotion. I observed to him, that, as 

 amongst other English delicacies, the Hanoverian rats are known to 

 be very fond of young pigeons, it was possible that they might have 

 put his pigeon-cot under a contribution. But he thought otherwise ; 

 and as his head man had seen an animal from time to time near the 

 place, which, by the length and colour, he took to be a weasel, I was 

 led to conclude that, in this case, the Hanoverians were not to 

 blame ; and so the gamekeeper was ordered to set the box-trap with 

 a hen's egg in it by way of a decoy. A weasel was taken prisoner 

 in due course of time ; and being in great beauty, I transferred it to 

 the Museum, where it remains at present. 



These are heavy charges, heavy enough to put the weasel upon an 

 uneasy footing with the country gentleman and the farmer's wife, 

 were it not that its many good offices rectify the occasional mistakes 

 which it is apt to make in the farmyard and on the manor, when the 

 ungovernable pressure of its stomach eggs it on to the loss of char- 

 acter, and perhaps of life to boot. 



The weasel, like the wood-owl, is a great devourer of beetles ; and 

 it is known to make incessant war on the mole, the mouse, and the 

 rat the last two of which draw most extravagantly on the hard- 

 earned profits of the husbandman. These vermin seem to constitute 

 its general food, and we must allow that it arrests their increase by 

 an activity and perseverance truly astonishing. It hunts for the 

 beetle in the grass ; it follows the mole through her subterraneous 

 mazes ; it drives the rats from the bottom of haystacks, and worries 

 them in the corn-ricks, and never allows them either peace or quiet 

 in the sewers and ditches where they take up their abode. That 

 man only who has seen a weasel go into a corn-stack, can form a just 

 idea of the horror which its approach causes to the Hanoverians col- 

 lected there for safety and plunder. The whole stack is in commo- 



