158 The Home of the Wolverene and Beaver. 



amongst poultry can hardly be imagined, for it is 

 animated by an intuitive blood-thirstiness and love 

 of destruction which prompts it to slaughter every 

 animal or bird within its reach, some of which are 

 ten times its own size, as the hare or domestic fowl. 

 The gentlemen quoted above proceed to say, " It is 

 a noted and hated depredator of the poultry-house, 

 and we have known forty well-grown fowls to have 

 been killed in one night by a single ermine. Sati- 

 ated with the blood of probably a single fowl, the 

 rest, like the flock slaughtered by the wolf in the 

 sheepfold, were destroyed in obedience to a law of 

 nature, an instinctive propensity to kill. We have 

 traced the footsteps of this blood-sucking little 

 animal on the snow, pursuing the trail of the 

 American rabbit, and although it could not over- 

 take its prey by superior speed, yet the timid hare 

 soon sought refuge in the hollow of a tree, or in a 

 hole dug by the marmot or skunk. Thither it was 

 pursued by the ermine, and destroyed, the skin and 

 other remains at the mouth of the burrow bearing 

 evidence of the fact. We observed an ermine, after 

 having captured a hare of the above species, first 

 Dehead it and then drag the body some twenty 

 yards over the fresh-fallen snow, beneath M'hich it 

 was concealed, and the snow tightly pressed over 

 it, the little prowler displaying thereby a habit of 



