The Weasel Family. 115 



short stops, the rabbit appeared quite overpowered with 

 fear, and, as if deeming escape hopeless, at length came 

 to a dead standstill, seemingly with no thought or effort 

 to go farther. It even half squatted down, as if to make 

 it more convenient for the cruel pursuer to mount upon 

 and make prey of it. All which the Weasel did in an 

 instant after, springing on the rabbit's shoulders, and 

 laying itself along the neck, the latter, with a last 

 agonized cry, but almost without a struggle, falling pros- 

 trate on the grass. There was nothing particularly 

 strange in all this, a spectacle the men had frequently 

 witnessed before. The unusual part of it came after, 

 when they observed the Weasel in a few seconds' time 

 forsake the quarry it had killed, and go streaking back 

 into the wood, out of which, in less than a minute more, 

 bolted another rabbit, pursued in the same way, over- 

 taken, and killed. But this was not all, nor the half of 

 it. For still another rabbit was run from among the trees 

 into the meadow, to be served in a similar fashion, and 

 another and another, till six dead bodies were upon the 

 sward all apparently the work of one and the same 

 Weasel ! 



It is a curious fact, and I believe it to be a fact, that 

 the rabbit, when pursued by stoat or Weasel, never takes 

 to its burrow ; yet when chased by dogs this is the first 

 place it makes for. It seems instinctively to know that 

 in its subterraneous abode, secure against every other, it 

 has no security against those its natural and worst 

 enemies, but would there be more at their mercy than 

 anywhere else. 



