THE WEASEL AND THE STOAT (THE ERMINE). 95 



thought at the time, has since occurred to me 

 as affording evidence of some importance. In 

 the first place, it goes to prove the perfection of 

 this animal's hearing. The stoat had undoubtedly 

 heard those rats when first we caught sight of 

 it, and it is rather remarkable that so minute 

 an atom of sound could be heard so far above 

 the general chorus of sounds of much greater 

 volume. An animal's hearing and powers of con- 

 centration on one individual sound can evidently 

 be screwed to a pitch far above our under- 

 standing ; and I have noticed a blackbird success- 

 fully listening for worms in the earth, while not 

 four yards away a lusty navvy was hammering 

 a post into the earth and his mate used a shovel 

 among loose gravel ! 



Again, the incident goes to show that the 

 hearing of the weasel family is one of their chief 

 guides in their hunting ; and if every weasel passing 

 within three hundred yards of a barn can tell 

 at that distance whether the barn is rat-infested, 

 there must indeed be few barns that escape their 

 activities at some time during the season. 



A weasel or a stoat that takes up its quarters 

 amidst such buildings probably continues to scatter 

 destruction in every direction till it becomes ex- 

 hausted by its gruesome work, and this process 

 is repeated after intervals of rest for so long as 

 there are rats to hunt. Thus it is conceivable 

 that in the course of two or three days a single 

 weasel might annihilate and drive out the entire 

 rat population of quite a flourishing rat stronghold 

 indeed, this regularly occurs ; and were it not 

 for the matter of polluting the atmosphere, it 

 would be interesting to note the results that would 

 follow the liberating of a small army of, say, semi- 



