294 EEMIXISCEXCES OF A SPOETSM.IN". 



within a very few yards of them. He levelled his loaded 

 gun, but it missed lire. This occurred five or six times 

 without a single spark being elicited from his flint, and 

 notwithstanding all this hammering in their rear, the 

 animals were never the least alarmed. At last, however, 

 he was successful in obtaining one of them, but the other 

 made its escape. On my examining the skull of the 

 one he had shot, I was satisfied that though the fitch 

 may hear sounds behind it, yet they are only heard im- 

 perfectly; otherwise, indeed, it must have taken the 

 alarm at the many attempts to fire the gun. It preys 

 upon various species of birds and reptiles; it commits 

 great destruction ujjon hares and rabbits ; and with that 

 thirst for blood which is natural to all the weasel kind, 

 it kills much more than it can devour. Groldsmith says 

 that he has seen taken out of the bm-row twenty dead 

 rabbits at a time, and which it had destroyed by a wound 

 hardly perceptible. A writer residing in Selkirkshire 

 says he has indubitable evidence of a single fitch killing 

 fifteen turkeys in one night. Pheasants, partridges, and 

 pigeons are equally liable to its attacks. The reptiles 

 which he preys upon are frogs and toads. The Selkirk- 

 shire naturalist before quoted says, " That in the month 

 of June he noticed a narrow track leading from the long 

 grass of a meadow towards the banks of the river Ettrick, 

 and which track he concluded was the morning track of 

 a fitch ; having traced it to the termination in a hole in 

 the ground, he procured a spade and dug out five young 

 fitches, nearly half-grown, sleek, clean, and well fed, and 

 really pretty, innocent-looking things. They were com- 

 fortably reposed in dry withered grass. From an apart- 

 ment or larder at the side of them, he poked out and 

 counted forty large frogs and toads, all of which possessed 



