A GIPSY FERRET 47 



doing its best to protect itself from the dogs. 

 Fortunately it was but very slightly injured, and 

 rapidly recovered. It was strange that both the 

 stoat and the ferret should have been together in 

 the same bush. 



Some three summers ago, when the hay was 

 being made in a small water-meadow belonging to 

 me, a labourer informed me that he had noticed 

 one of my ferrets in the bank of a hedge- 

 row which bounded the field. Not having any 

 ferrets of my own, I was somewhat at a loss to 

 understand how a ferret could have found its way 

 into a field which was on all sides surrounded by 

 streams. Searching the hedgerow, I discovered 

 a small polecat ferret threading its way through 

 the bushes. Observing me, it bolted into a rat- 

 hole, but on my whistling to it it reappeared, and 

 after several attempts I succeeded in catching it. 

 I was holding it somewhat carelessly with my 

 right hand, while talking to the man who had 

 accompanied me, forgetting that my left hand 

 was quite close to the ferret, which seized me by 

 the thumb, biting me severely, and refused to 

 let go its hold until it had been pretty sharply 

 tapped on the muzzle. I concluded that it be- 

 longed to the old warrener previously referred 

 to, whose cottage was within a quarter of a mile 

 distant. I accordingly sent it over to him. He 

 afterwards informed me that the ferret was not 

 his property, but had belonged to some gipsies 

 who had been encamped near the village some 



