22O Practical Game Preserving. 



birds of any sort, or poultry, by a sharp bite right into the 

 brain of the victim, causing, as we before noted, either imme- 

 diate death, or instantaneous stupor resulting in death in a 

 few minutes, during which time the vermin busies itself 

 sucking the life blood of its prey from a hole in the side of 

 the neck, bitten close up to the head. None of the other 

 weasels employ this summary mode of causing death, and 

 therefore, any animal or bird found killed in this manner may 

 certainly have its destruction laid to the credit of a fitch, and 

 this very manner of killing gives the polecat much more 

 opportunity for the indulgence of its murderous instinct than 

 if it employed the slower process of simply sucking the blood. 

 Unfortunately, the fitch generally endeavours to carry away 

 as much of its prey as possible, and removes them also in 

 separate directions, thus leaving very little evidence of its 

 depredations, except, however, in the case of poultry, which 

 it rarely troubles to carry, be it full-grown fowls, or ducks, or 

 young chickens and ducklings, but at times a gosling or two 

 will be removed. Not only will this venturesome little beast 

 come at night to reap its spoils, but we ourselves have had 

 ducklings killed before twelve o'clock in the day, though 

 we have managed to be one too many for the gentleman 

 eventually. A dozen or eighteen young ducks of about 

 a month old destroyed in three visits is not an immaterial 

 loss, and many such cases have come under our notice. In 

 one case we remember, the mischief was put down to the 

 malice of gipsies. Also animals killed by polecats have 

 sometimes apparently been mauled a good deal, that is to say, 

 they appear to have been rolled and flung % about. We fancy 

 that the vermin in such cases plays with its prey and lies upon 



