254 



ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



weight of five or six pounds, but the whole body can 

 be drawn through a napkin-ring. The legs are very 

 short and remarkably far apart ; the occiput tapers 

 toward the neck, and the rump toward the tail; a full- 

 grown ferret can squeeze its head through a rat-hole, 

 and where the head goes the rest of the body follows 

 like a caudal appendage. No other mammal bears such 

 a striking resemblance to a snake. In proportion to 

 his size, an old ferret is an amazing tough customer, 

 and can be trained to clean out a whole rabbit-colony 

 and drag the settlers out of their holes ; and that seems, 

 after all, his proper vocation, for in the rat-business he 

 is rather liable to " get stuck," — i.e., to squeeze himself 

 into a hole with a tight place where he can neither 

 advance nor retreat, and thus risks falling a prey to his 

 intended victims, which are not slow to take advantage 

 of his " fix." 



Like bears, dogs are by nature far less savage than 

 the fclidcs, and yet it is from the canine species that 

 artificial selection has evolved the ultra-type of reckless 

 ferocity. The boldness of a bull-dog is different from 

 that of any other wild beast : courage is not the word 

 to describe his disposition : he is not satisfied with 

 defending himself or his master, he is not stubbornly 

 valiant merely, but blindly aggressive, combative from 

 a sheer love of combat, without the least regard to the 

 merits of the cause or the advantages of the result. 

 The mere sight of a stranger — biped or quadruped — is 



