ERMINE WEASEL. 197 



of the Philosophical Society of Cambridge taken in that 

 county. Mr. Couch, of Polperro, states that he has seen 

 it more than once in Cornwall. 



An intelligent labourer at Selbourne, whose habits of 

 life formerly gave him greater opportunity of observing 

 the fera naturd than would be strictly legal, assures us 

 that he has repeatedly seen the Stoat in its white dress, 

 and occasionally in its pied or transition colours, in that 

 neighbourhood. One in this state of partial change, 

 killed on Selbourne Hill, we have ourselves presented 

 to the Alton Museum. 



It appears to be established that, whatever may be the 

 change which takes place in the structure of the hair, 

 upon which the alteration of colour immediately depends, 

 this transition from the summer to the winter colours is 

 primarily occasioned by actual change of temperature, 

 and not by the mere advance of the season. The obser- 

 vations of our friend John Hogg, Esq., contained partly 

 in an excellent paper on the subject in the fifth volume 

 of London's " Magazine of Natural History," and partly 

 in a letter with which he has favoured us since the pub- 

 lication of that paper, tend amply to confirm this view of 

 the matter. " Within the last nine years," says Mr. 

 Hogg, writing from the county of Durham, "I have had 

 the good fortune to meet with two Ermines alive, and in 

 two of the most different winters that have occurred for 

 a great many years : the one was in the extremely severe 

 winter of January to March, 1823, and the other was in 

 the almost as extremely mild January of the present year 

 {1832). In consequence of the months of December, 1831, 

 and January, 1832, having been so extremely mild, I was 

 greatly surprised to find this Stoat clothed in his winter 

 fur ; and the more so, because I had seen, about three 

 weeks or a month before, a Stoat in its summer coat or 



