190 WOODLAND, MOOR, AND STREAM 



country called 'no man's land ' suits him best Bare 

 moorland with stone-wall boundaries running over 

 it in parts dividing different spots of sheep-grazing 

 ground ; loose stones placed one on the other without 

 anything to hold them beyond their own weight and 

 the way they are built. North-country hedges these 

 are pleasantly called. The cracks and crannies in 

 them are the favourite hiding-places of the polecat, 

 for, unless the shepherd's collies catch him away from 

 home or the warrener's terriers chance to find him, he 

 lives his life out, there, in peace and comfort. Any 

 one who has seen a large, dark-coloured ferret, 

 commonly called a polecat ferret, has seen a polecat 

 to all intents and purposes. 



Strange to say, the localities where I have known 

 him to be fairly numerous were not game-preserving 

 localities ; the birds you saw there in the greatest 

 numbers were crows, hooded crows, jackdaws, jays, 

 and magpies ; in my own native country, flat and 

 damp as it is in many parts, he was, when I lived 

 there, only too common an animal. It was not 

 unusual to hear some one say, 'Terrible work in my 

 henhouse last night, neighbour, but I've got him.' 

 The walls there were called wet ones, dykes in plain 

 terms. On the northern upland moors and on the 

 sides of a wooded hill in a southern county he is quite 



