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 ina 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 
