POLECATS, STOATS, AND WEASELS 349 



In stacks they are all alert, and will draw under the stuff 

 and thrust their heads suddenly through the thatch in the 

 spot they think the bird is sitting; for they, too, work 

 by scent, like the stoat. They will hunt little rabbits when 

 they get separated from the does, swimming (and they swim 

 much faster than a rat) up the dikes to circumvent them if 

 necessary, or hiding in the grass until they pass closely to 

 them, when they will pounce upon them. An old fenman 

 once saw a good-sized rabbit carry a mouse-hunter on its 

 back for over three hundred yards. 



Should you catch him with his prey, generally a mouse, 

 he will immediately drop it; and if you "hide up," and be 

 patient, you will see him return and pick it up again, taking 

 it to his burrow, even if he has to carry it a hundred yards. 



No place seems inaccessible to their long, slim bodies, 

 and they can enter almost any crevice or hole that will allow 

 a mouse to pass. And should you " stow them up," they will 

 emit the same stench as a stoat, though it is not so pungent. 



In the spring, too, they may be seen fighting, after the 

 manner of a stoat, on the sere grasses. Old rabbiters tell 

 me if a mouse-hunter gets into a sandpit full of rabbits' 

 " eyes," he will stop there all summer if not killed, whereas 

 a stoat will not. These men say, too, the mouse-hunter 

 " kills for the love of killing." However, he is a harmless 

 creature, and should not be killed by the gamekeeper. 



Gilbert White, and many of his imitators, talk of a smaller 

 species of weasel. I do not believe there exists such a 

 species, but that the female weasel, which is smaller than the 

 male, is responsible for this mistake ; and the looseness and 

 dishonesty of his plagiarists have perpetuated the error 

 most recently confirmed (?) by that inaccurate " naturalist 

 labourer" " Son of the Marshes." 



