136 SOLDIER AND SPORTSMAN 



the receding flood. 1 picked the Httle thing up and 

 placed it on a bunch of grass. On my return journey 

 some hours later the little vole was still where I had 

 placed it ; this seemed to me to show a want of 

 maternal care on the part of the mother. 



Different from the behaviour of the vole was that 

 of a stoat I once saw on the Wyly river. As I 

 walked down-stream I saw a stoat swimmine 

 across some fifty yards lower down. On reaching 

 a spot opposite, where she was about to land, she 

 must have viewed me, because she turned and 

 came tearing back, the light of battle glittering in 

 her eyes. Coming out of the river a yard or so 

 from where I stood, she made a spring which I 

 warded off with the landinof net. Then she turned 

 and commenced nosing about in the grass, putting 

 four young ones on their legs. In my endeavours 

 to catch one, she charged again, and it was clear 

 that if I was to capture a young one it would be 

 over her dead body ; so I merely followed and 

 watched her herding her flock as a collie herds 

 sheep. Soon they reached a hedge and disappeared. 

 My friend on whose water I had leave to fish was 

 a shooting man, and I did not tell him of the 

 incident. 



On another occasion I witnessed a fiorht between 

 a common rat and a weasel. They had been fight- 

 ing apparently in the long grass on the bank, for 



