48 IN NATURE'S WAYS 



fine brush, with its black tip. What he lacks in orna- 

 ment helps to make him invisible to his prey. He is 

 the smallest of his tribe, and the least striking to the 

 eye, but he is as ferocious as any, and more cunning 

 or more fortunate, for though much persecuted, he 

 has survived where the pine-marten and the polecat 

 have been exterminated. 



But he does most of his hunting out of sight, and 

 much of it underground, through jungles of dense 

 undergrowth, and in long grass. Often we have heard 

 him rustling over dry leaves, but we have seen no more 

 than a fleeting glimpse of his dashing form. 



He is called sometimes by country people " mouse- 

 hunter " and " mouse-killer." When he is left alone 

 to do the work he is meant to do, he will quickly clear 

 a wheat-stack of mice ; his presence about a barn- 

 yard, or ricks, or a garden, puts terror into the heart 

 of all the tribe of mice. Creatures on which the 

 weasel preys seem paralysed by fear when they know 

 he is upon their trail. A mouse will sit quivering on a 

 bush too terrified to move when the weasel looks up 

 from below, or on the ground can only go hopping 

 along, slowly and painfully, when a weasel is after 

 him, as if in his dread he has lost control of his limbs. 



And it is so with the rabbit which the weasel hunts. 

 Soon he gives up in despair, and, crouching, awaits his 

 doom. Then up canters the little weasel, whimpering 

 on the hot scent, to make the death-spring. 



If you come upon a weasel which has just killed a 

 rabbit, you may drive him away, but though you stand 

 by the rabbit, back he will come, again and again, to 

 his kill. And if you defend the rabbit's body, pre- 

 sently you may hear the little hunter uttering a sorrow- 

 ful note of disappointment. Valiant indeed is the 

 weasel and many stories tell how, when a man has 



