CULTURE OF FUR-BEARERS — 249 
where quail or game is preserved the animal 
often does great harm. 
It does not appear, however, that every 
weasel kills chickens, nor that the same weasel 
devotes its whole energies to this end, as a 
man-eating tiger will do when once it learns 
how easy it is to secure human prey. It seems, 
rather, that an occasional weasel now and then 
seizes a pullet or duck. The worst of it is, 
however, that when it has done so its ferocity 
is likely to be so fired by the taste or smell of 
blood that it goes on massacring the fowls 
after the manner of a wolf or a puma in a 
sheep-fold, as though in a rage of blood intoxi- 
cation. 
The weasel as a mouser. There is another 
side to the account, however, and that is the 
ceaseless and extensive beneficial work of these 
ferocious little creatures in pursuit of the ro- 
dents which year by year destroy more grain 
and ‘young trees than all the poultry loss of 
a year amounts to a hundred times over. In 
the West they are the determined and inde- 
fatigable enemies of ground-squirrels, gophers 
and all sorts of mice, which they follow to the 
