THE COMMON WEASEL. 95 



statement is nn t repeated by recent writers, still it is not 

 unlikely to be true. 



After all, however, the weasel chiefly preys on rats, and the 

 smaller species of mice; hence, to give him " his due," he is, 

 " take him for all in all," a useful creature; but where few 

 poultry are reared, and agriculture is the principal occupation, 

 he ought not to be molested, in consideration of his services 

 among the corn- stacks * and flour-mills, where he is more 

 useful indeed than either the dog or the cat. Goldsmith says, 

 that in confinement it will not touch its food until it begins to 

 putrefy. Sometimes, when pressed by hunger, or emboldened 

 by the strength of numbers, weasels will pursue and attack 

 mankind of which fact several instances have occurred. It 

 is, indeed, a very serious thing to encounter a pack of weasels, 

 for their great activity renders it impossible to watch and 

 frustrate the designs of all. When it is known that two 

 weasels are a match for a dog, it may be easily imagined what 

 sort of chance an unarmed person must have when beset by a 

 dozen or more. 



" One fine summer's evening, about forty years ago, as a 

 Mr. Brown was returning from Gilmerton, near Edinburgh, 

 by the Dalkeith-road, he observed a man, who was leaping 

 about, and endeavouring to defend himself from the assaults 

 of fifteen or twenty weasels; and which he was tearing from 

 him, and trying to keep from his throat, to which they seemed 

 to direct their course. Mr. Brown joined in the combat, and, 

 having a stick, contrived to hit and kill several of them. Seeing 

 this, the others became intimidated, and speedily disappeared 

 in the fissures of an adjacent rock. The man was nearly over- 

 come with fatigue and exhaustion, having been engaged in his 

 struggle with the weasels, as well as he could guess, for above 

 twenty minutes ; and, but for the timely assistance of Mr. 

 Brown, he said, he must have inevitably fallen a victim to 



* Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, which abounds in the most absurd defi- 

 nitions of animals and plants, tells us, that the weasel is " a little animal that 

 eats corn and kills mice." This is worse than his definition of a guinea-hen : 

 " a showy bird, with fine feathers." 



