42 BIRDS. 



the struggle that the farmer cautiously put his hands 

 down and grabbed them both by the back of the neck 

 He put them in a cage, and offered them bread and 

 .other food. This they refused to eat, but in a few 

 days one of them had eaten the other up, picking his 

 ilxmes clean and leaving nothing but the skeleton. 



The same farmer was one day in his cellar when 

 (two rats came out of a hole near him in great haste, 

 and ran up the cellar wall and along its top till they 

 came to a floor timber that stopped their progress, 

 when they turned at bay, and looked excitedly back 

 along the course they had come. In a moment a wea- 

 sel, evidently in hot pursuit of them, came out of the 

 hole, and seeing the farmer, checked his course and 

 darted back. The rats had doubtlees turned to give 

 him fight, and would probably have been a match for 

 him. 



The weasel seems to track its game by scent. A 

 hunter of my acquaintance was one day sitting in the 

 woods, when he saw a red squirrel run with great 

 speed up a tree near him, and out upon a long branch, 

 from which he leaped to some rocks, and disappeared 

 beneath them. In a moment a weasel came in full 

 course upon his trail, ran up the tree, then out along 

 the branch, from the end of which he leaped to the 

 2ocks as the squirrel did, and plunged beneath them. 



Doubtless the squirrel fell a prey to him. The 

 •squirrel's best game would have been to have kept to 

 the higher tree-tops, where he could easily have dis- 

 tanced the weasel. But beneath the rocks he stood a 

 very poor chance. I have often wondered what keeps 

 such an animal as the weasel in check, for weasels are 

 quite rare. They never need go hungry, for rats and 

 squirrels and mice and birds are everywhere. They 



