82 THE FITCH. 



it, yet they are only heard imperfectly ; otherwise, indeed, 

 it must have taken alarm at the many attempts to fire the 

 gun."* 



It preys upon various species of mammals, birds, reptiles, 

 fish, and mollusks. Dr. Weissenborn says, that in Germany 

 it wages an unrelenting war against the hamster, feeding chiefly 

 upon it during the autumn, penetrating into its burrows, and 

 taking up an abode there, if convenient, and laying up a store 

 of frequently as many as ten dead hamsters. In England, and 

 elsewhere, it commits great destruction among hares and rabbits, 

 and with that insatiable thirst for blood which is natural to all 

 the weasel kind, it kills much more than it can devour. Gold- 

 smith says, he has seen taken out of the burrow twenty dead 

 rabbits at a time, and which it had destroyed by a wound hardly 

 perceptible. Lovell says it kills mice. Generally speaking, 

 some feeling of fear deters both the fitch and the stoat from 

 attacking the poultry, or other animals belonging to man j but 

 when once they conquer their fear, they slaughter them to a great 

 extent. A writer, residing in Selkirkshire, says, he has had indu- 

 bitable evidence of a single fitch killing fifteen turkeys ? turkey 

 poults] in one night. " The animal had dragged them all in beneath 

 a large stack of firewood, where, with his killed prey lying around 

 him, he was put to death on the following morning." f Pheasants, 

 partridges, fowls, and pigeons, are equally liable to its attacks. 

 Goldsmith says that, when it gets among pigeons, " it dispatches 

 each with a single wound in the head, and after killing a great 

 number, and drinking their blood, it then begins to carry them 

 away one by one to its hole ; but if the opening by which it 

 entered the dove-house, be not large enough for the bodies of the 

 pigeons to be drawn through, the fitch contents itself with carrying 

 away the heads, and makes a feast upon the brains." In Lorraine, 

 and several of the adjoining provinces of France, where the fitch 

 abounds to an excess, it is almost impossible to keep any poultry, 

 io consequence of its frequent ravages. Aquatic birds are also 



* Magazine of Natural History (1831), vol. iv. p. 12. 

 f Ibid. (1833), vol. vi. p. 207. 



