WAY TO DESTROY VERMIN. 401 



rascals, in pursuit of a rabbit or young hare, is the very minia- 

 ture of a wolf running down a deer ; a panic comes over the 

 victim, which prevents it from making a determined effort to 

 escape. Instead of distancing its persecutor by taking a long 

 stretch, the poor terror-stricken rabbit keeps slowly dotting 

 along, only a short way ahead, and squats down the first oppor- 

 tunity. The weasel follows on the track, and very soon the 

 rabbit, not daring to take refuge in its hole, resigns itself to 

 its fate. 



I kept a weasel for some time in a wire cage, which soon 

 became tame enough to pull little pieces of meat from the 

 hand through the bars. Having a mind to try its pluck, I 

 procured from a rat-catcher an enormous male rat, at least 

 twice the size of the weasel, and in presence of several friends 

 turned it into the cage. The rat reared itself on its hind legs 

 and fought with the utmost desperation, but in less than a 

 quarter of a minute it lay gasping on its side. There is a 

 curious account of a similar fight between a large buck-ferret 

 and a rat, in Jesse's Gleanings of Natural History ; but I 

 cannot help thinking, either that the rat must have been the 

 champion of the genus mus, or the ferret the most faint-hearted 

 of his species. Once let a ferret, properly entered at rats, get 

 within a gripe of its foe, and it will seize ty scent with the 

 rapidity of lightning, and never quit its hold while life remains. 

 The pheasantry-keeper, whom I before mentioned as having 

 taught grouse, black-game, pheasants, &c., to live together in 

 harmony, tried a similar experiment with a ferret, a polecat, a 

 stoat, and a weasel. They were confined in a large box grated 

 over with iron bars ; and the result proved that a ferret stands 

 upon little ceremony with a much more fierce and active enemy 

 than a rat. The first victim was the stoat, whose place was 

 supplied by another, which soon shared the fate of its prede- 

 cessor. The ferret next attacked and killed the weasel ; and, 

 to crown all, the polecat, a large male, nearly double the size 

 of the ferret, a small female, was found dead one morning the 

 cage exhibiting the marks of a desperate struggle : the fowmarte 



2c 



