I2O WILD LIFE AJ HOME. 



had a very promising family of seven sons and 

 daughters. 



We used to have a lot of stoats and weasels 

 between Barnet and Elstree, and I have frequently 

 had the latter chatter at me when I have disturbed 

 them ; but a change of gamekeepers soon thinned 

 their ranks. 



In the winter time, when the weather is severe, 

 weasels often take to barns, and levy toll upon the 

 rats and mice living therein. In the days of my 

 youth, when engaged in farming, I have traced 

 both them and their would-be victims in what 

 appeared to be a wholesale migration through the 

 snow from one barn to another. They occasionally 

 take up their quarters in a mole's nest, where they 

 store up the bodies of their subterranean prey. I 

 remember, whilst tracing a fox in the snow on the 

 Yorkshire fells, I came across a place where he 

 had scratched up a weasel's larder containing the 

 carcases of several moles. 



Great difficulties beset the path of the photographer 

 who undertakes the task of getting a picture 

 of an adult fox at home, although the animal 

 may be studied sometimes at comparatively close 

 quarters. I once watched one from behind a 

 hedge in Surrey playing with the leg of a rabbit, 

 just as a puppy would with an old slipper. He 

 picked it up, shook it from side to side, flung it 

 up in the air, and capered around in great light- 

 ness of heart, until his eye suddenly fell upon 



