Ground Vermin The Polecat. 215 



more than it could consume in a month. Furthermore is this 

 mustela of such rapacious instinct that it has been known to 

 capture eels in a river, and frogs, newts, toads, and fish are 

 liable to its attacks. Birds, chiefly game, it catches by 

 stealing upon them at night and silently inflicting a sharp 

 and quick bite into the brain, which either kills them instantly 

 or else throws them into complete insensibility, during which 

 it proceeds calmly to suck the blood from the veins. In this 

 manner, should it come suddenly on a covey of partridges, 

 it will oftentimes fatally wound, if not all, still a fair number, 

 before they are sufficiently aware of their danger to make 

 efforts to escape. Hares it will destroy in much the same 

 manner, and steal upon them during the day when they are 

 complacently dozing under shade from the sun, or at night 

 time when they are busily occupied in feeding. Nor is the 

 polecat devoid of perseverance, for by dint of enormous 

 endurance and a remarkably acute power of scent, it will 

 follow a " start " hare through all her wanderings, to even- 

 tually run poor puss to death. Rabbits fall victims to the 

 polecat in the same manner that they do to stoats, namely, 

 by the vermin tracking them to holt, and, when there, using 

 their superior cunning as a complete set-off against the 

 knowledge the rabbit has of the many intricacies of its 

 burrow. Rats, too, both those frequenting the water side and 

 those in corn stacks, are attacked by the polecat occasionally, 

 the latter more than the former ; but as no rat dies with- 

 out a fight and they certainly have the. greater advantage on 

 account of the smallness of their holes they are generally 

 not so acceptable to the polecat as they might be were they 

 tamely to submit to be killed in the manner of hares or rabbits. 



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