171 CASSELL'S POPULAR NATURAL HISTORY. 



Tin- colour of the ferret is yellowish-white, but there are specimens of a brown colour. These 



-aid to be of the mixed breed between the polecat and the ferret ; and probably were so, as they 



w.-iv always J:ir<;rr and .stouter than the white. The ferret generally sleeps during the day, and feeds 



at night. In a domesticated state, it is usually fed on bread and milk. It breeds twice in the year, 



and brings forth from five to eight at a birth. 



Mr. Jesse relates that a poor woman rushed, screaming with agony and flight, into the house of a 

 surgeon, a friend of his, with a child that had been almost killed by a ferret. The face, neck, and anus 

 were dreadfully lacerated, the jugular vein had been opened, as also the temporal artery, and the eyes 

 \vi-rc greatly injured. The surgeon, having done what he could, returned with the mother to the 

 cottage, when the ferret was instantly seen rushing from behind some sticks, where he had taken 

 shelter, and, with his head erect, boldly came forward and met the infuriated parent in the middle of 

 the room, still holding the infant in her arms. On the surgeon kicking the ferret, as the first impulse 



f 



THE ZOBILLE. 



of protection, the animal endeavoured to seize his leg, and not until its back was broken by repeated 

 kicks, did it give over its earnest and reiterated attempts to renew its sanguinary feast ; and, indeed, 

 the piteous screams of the child seemed to rouse it to efforts, happily in vain, to regain its prey. 



The ferret was of large growth, and much distended with the infant's blood; and, although 

 formerly of peculiar shyness, yet it lost sight of fear, and became ferocious in the pursuit of the unfor- 

 tunate infant. It appears that the poor woman had left her child, about six months old, in a crudli- 

 whilst she went to market, when, it was supposed, the infant's cry had arrested the attention of the 

 ferret, who managed to make its escape, and thus effected its purpose. There was good reason to 

 believe it must have passed more than half an hour in the indulgence of its appetite, from the noigh- 

 Uurs having heard the piercing shrieks of the child for a long time, without the slightest suspicion of 

 the mother's absence. 



THE CAPE POLECAT, OR ZORILLE.* 



A STHOXI; family resemblance in habits and manners runs through the group now under consideration, 



ng, as it. wrrr, together even species occupying distant and opposite portions of the globe, and 



UMDMI that cannot be mistaken. The Cape Zorille, however, betrays a 



* Putorius Capensis. , 



