FITCHET "WEASEL. 205 



Hares and Rabbits, is incalculable ; and in the latter 

 case particularly, it follows these animals into their bur- 

 rows with such facility, that a single family of Polecats 

 would shortly produce a sensible diminution in numbers 

 amongst the denizens of a whole warren. 



However, of late years, the Polecat, like many other of 

 our indigenous mammals of considerable size, which are 

 fast tending towards extermination, has become much 

 less common, and its depredations are probably confined 

 to such districts as have deep woods and other inaccessi- 

 ble retreats. 



Bewick has given a figure of the Fitchet — and a very 

 spirited one it is — in the act of holding an eel which he 

 has just caught. This figure is intended to perpetuate a 

 curious fact, of an individual of this species having been 

 observed repeatedly to resort to the bank of a river in 

 search of those fish, of which no less than eleven were 

 found in its retreat. A no less curious example of aber- 

 rant appetite in this animal is related in Loudon's Maga- 

 zine,* of a female Polecat which was pursued to her nest, 

 where were found five young ones " comfortably embedded 

 in dry withered grass ; and where they were lodged, all 

 things were tight and snug to a wonder ; but," says the 

 narrator, " in a side hole I picked out and counted most 

 carefully forty large frogs and two toads. These were 

 all alive, but merely so ; capable of sprawling a little, 

 and that was all : for the mother had contrived to strike 

 them all with palsy. They were merely capable of spraw- 

 ling, and not of moving away ; and on examination I 

 found that the whole number, toads and all, were bitten 

 through the brain." There are numerous facts confirma- 

 tory of this predilection for frogs ; and it is perfectly 

 consistent with the habits of some of its congeners. A 



* Vol. vi, p. 206. 



