FO UR-FO O TED PRIZE-FIGHTERS. 



253 



duellists. They chased each other round and round a 

 tree, through hollow roots and bushes, squeaking, hiss- 

 ing, and barking, and every now and then clapperclaw- 

 ing and snapping away like little wild-cats. His re- 

 peated intervention merely caused them to confine their 

 scuffles to the higher branches, but after each round 

 they raced up and down the tree and often whisked by 

 within two or three yards of his feet. Fighting-cocks 

 are even more tenacious, and the Alpine ruff, or rock- 

 plover (Tringa pugnax), is often captured during the 

 progress of his desperate monomachies. But birds 

 lack the vindictiveness of four-footed prize-fighters. If 

 a fighting-cock gets killed, it is mostly on account of 

 his own obstinacy in preferring death to the alternative 

 of saving himself by flight ; but a marten has to fight 

 it out willy-nilly, the victor generally kills his rival. 

 Besides answering the purposes of natural selection, 

 such honeymoon combats may serve to check the in- 

 crease of noxious creatures that have no natural enemies 

 to pay them in their own coin. Being semi-nocturnal, 

 and excellent runners, swimmers, diggers, leapers, and 

 climbers, martens are very hard to exterminate, and 

 would become a worse nuisance than rats if the pro- 

 genitors of the species did not attend to each other. 

 Their relatives the European ferrets are the implacable 

 foes of the whole rodent species. The formation of a 

 ferret's body is wonderfully adapted to facilitate its 

 special business. It attains a length of two feet and a 



