HORSES AND HOUNDS. 169 



giving tlie lioimds a good opportunity of scratching their faces, 

 and, when tired, ascended a tree, or went to ground in the 

 rocks. 



The polecat, stoat, and weasel are the most bloodthirsty of all 

 vermin, living almost upon the blood of the animals and birds 

 which they destroy. Eabbits are their chief prey, which have 

 little chance of escape, as they not only seek them in their bur- 

 rows, but, when driven out, hunt them by scent, and seldom 

 lose their game. It has been said that weasels and stoats form 

 themselves into packs, for the purpose of running down hares 

 and rabbits. This is partly correct. I have myself seen a litter 

 of young stoats, with their mamma at their head, in hot pursuit 

 of a rabbit ; and so intent were they on their sport, that, 

 although they met me in full career in a narrow lane, they paid 

 no attention to my presence, but went on with the chase ; neither 

 did I (struck with the novel sight) interfere with them. In the 

 winter season, however, I have seldom seen more than two 

 together. Their method, in killing hares and rabbits, is to 

 seize them behind the ear; and so firm is their hold, that no 

 efforts of the poor animals can remove their remorseless enemy. 

 They then suck the blood, gnawing into the vertebrae of the 

 neck or brain. In this state the rabbit is abandoned, and a 

 fresh pursuit commences. " Catch a weasel asleep" is rather an 

 old saying, and a tolerably correct one. They are an ever-rest- 

 less, busy, meddling race, and I have met with them at all hours 

 of the day, and nigiit too. Where rabbits are scarce, they hunt 

 the hedge-rows in fields for other game, and nothing comes 

 amiss to them. Hen pheasants and jDartridges, which often 

 make their nests in banks or under walls, fall an easy prey; 

 young leverets are equally helpless. 



I must here, however, make some distinction between the 

 stoat and the weasel, which are often confounded together as 

 one species. They difier both in size, colour, and length of tail 

 materially. I know only of one species of stoat, but I have 

 certainly seen more than one species of weasel. The stoat is 

 yellow on its back in summer, and often white in winter, with 

 a long body, rather large ears, and a long tail, with a black tip 

 at the end, the throat and belly being a yellowish white. The 

 weasel, on the contrary, is not half the size of the stoat, 

 although in bodily shape resembling him. He is of a brown 

 colour on the back, his head more angular and ears shorter 

 than the stoat, stands shorter on the legs, and has a short tail. 

 There is one species of weasel so small that it can easily follow 

 mice in their holes ; and one of these, not long since, I watched 

 into a mouse's hole in an open grass field. Seeing something 



