266 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



the weasel family, they kill for the love of killing, 

 it is not hard to understand why the keeper's hand is 

 against them. Sometimes they do great harm in 

 the coverts ; and the keeper shoots them, traps them 

 and does them to death with various subtle engines 

 of his own machination. To-day the marten is rare; 

 soon it will be extinct altogether. 



Weasels do much less harm. They are the smallest 

 of our carnivorous animals, and will probably long 

 survive. They frequently abound where least sus- 

 pected, in the cultivated as well as the wildest parts 

 of the district. They take up their abode near 

 farmhouses, in decayed outbuildings, hay-ricks and 

 disused quarries, and may often be seen near old 

 walls, or running along the top of them with a mouse 

 or bird in their mouths. These things form the 

 staple of their food; but there is no denying that a 

 weasel will occasionally run down the strongest hare, 

 and that rabbits, from their habit of rushing into 

 their burrows, become an easy prey. But this does 

 not happen often, I believe. To rats the weasel is 

 a deadly enemy; no united number of them will 

 attack it, and the largest singly has no chance 

 against it. Like the polecat the weasel hunts by 

 scent. It climbs trees easily and takes birds by 

 stealth. The keeper has seen a brooding partridge 

 taken in this manner; and on winter evenings the 

 sparrows are seized as they roost in holes in a hay- 



