14 THE RIVER-SIDE NATURALIST. 



" Stout" bold ; and the name is thus pronounced at the 

 present time in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere. The stoat 

 is one-third larger than the weasel ; the head is broader 

 and the tail longer, the tip being black and rather bushy. 



The muscles of the neck of both stoat and weasel are 

 extremely powerful and well developed, as the following 

 anecdote witnessed by a friend whose veracity we can 

 vouch for will prove. One evening he noticed, when in 

 Richmond Park, two stoats dragging a dead rabbit up the 

 inclined stem of an old pollard oak, and disappear into a 

 hole in the trunk. On tapping the tree with a stick the 

 two old stoats rushed out with a most prodigious chattering, 

 and immediately afterwards four or five young ones. A 

 young lad who accompanied him climbed the tree, and put 

 his hand and arm down into the hole, when, to our friend's 

 astonishment, he pulled out a rabbit, dead, but quite warm, 

 and the remains of four others. 



THE SHREW-MOUSE. 



Many of us, no doubt, in our rambles, have come across, 

 lying dead on the gravel-walks, a mouselike-looking animal 

 with a long snout. This is the SHREW-MOUSE (Sorex vul- 



isy Order Imectivorce, Family Soricidce). 



THE SHREW-MOUSE. 



Although called a mouse by common consent, it is 

 nothing of the kind, but is a sorex, and its only likeness 

 to a mouse is in its colour. Many suggestions have been 



