FRAGMENTS. 387 



last it got a little way ahead, and took refuge in some 

 thick brushwood. Expecting that its fate was now sealed, 

 I ran down, and in so doing alarmed the stoat, which made 

 off into a drain. To give the rabbit a chance for its life, 

 I started it also, and it cantered away in an opposite direc- 

 tion. On telling the story to a farmer there, he said that 

 these hunts were not unusual on that bank, but they were far 

 more comical when the stoat was in his white winter dress. 

 The rabbits were almost always run down, and he had trained 

 his sheep-dogs to attack the stoat ; at which they were soon 

 so expert as very rarely to miss being the rabbit's avenger. 

 The weasel, only half the size of the stoat, is more 

 than a match for either a full-grown rabbit or rat. I was 

 amused by an account of one of these combats, related to 

 me by a friend who had just witnessed it, while riding 

 along the public road, near Wargrave, in Berkshire. A 

 weasel had attacked a large Norway rat, which seemed to 

 think discretion the better part of valour. As he was 

 retreating, he always wheeled about, raising himself on his 

 hind legs when attacked in rear. As soon as the weasel 

 heard the sound of the horses' feet, he hid behind a 

 wall, but the poor rat was so completely done up as 

 to suffer himself to be seized by the tail. The English 

 peasantry assert that there are two kinds of weasel, one 

 very small, called " a cane," or " the mouse-killer." This 

 idea, I have no doubt, is erroneous, and the " mouse- 

 killers" are only the young ones of the year; numbers of 

 these half-grown weasels appearing in summer and autumn. 



