94 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



have found nests both of young stoats and weasels 

 in a rick holding rats on one occasion a nest 

 containing nine little stoats, with eyes not yet open, 

 in a wheat-rick, from which and another next to it 

 we made a bag of over five hundred sizable rats. I 

 believe, however, that young stoats and weasels are 

 removed from rat-infested lodgings before they are 

 old enough to get into hot water in the absence of 

 their parents. I remember catching an old weasel 

 and an old rat in a trap at the same time. It was 

 set at the corner of a corn-rick, and the rat was 

 caught by the near hind-leg and the weasel by the 

 near front-leg ; but whether the weasel meant to eat 

 the rat or was driving it from its little weasels, I 

 cannot say. I think if stoats and weasels really 

 were the conquerors of rats, as some allege, rats 

 would not stay with them a moment longer than 

 they could help, in a rick or elsewhere. 



Stoats that have young ones to provide for kill a 

 large number of rabbits, chiefly small ones just 

 able to run. They destroy also a large number of 

 pheasants and partridges by ruining their nests, 

 though they are very seldom successful in catching 

 the sitting birds. Once while I was kneeling down 

 more closely to examine a ruined partridge nest, 

 with the toe of one of my boots over a shallow rut 

 in an old cart-way, I felt a smart blow, and heard a 

 ghastly shriek. The guilty stoat had returned, and 

 saved me further investigation of clues. Stoats will 



