140 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST. 



roughs' has said also. After telling of the manifold 

 perils of a bird's life, he says : 



" One day last summer my attention was arrested 

 by the angry notes of a pair of brown thrashers that 

 were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone 

 row in a remote field. Presently I saw what it was 

 that excited them — three large, red weasels or ermines 

 coming along the stone wall and leisurely and half 

 playfully exploring every tree that stood near it. 

 They had probably robbed the thrashers. They 

 would go up the trees with greatest ease and glide 

 serpentlike out upon the main branches. When they 

 descended the tree they were unable to come straight 

 down like a squirrel, but went around it spirally. 

 How boldly they thrust their heads out of the wall 

 and eyed and sniffed me as I drew near — their round, 

 thin ears, their prominent, glistening, beadlike eyes, 

 and the curving, snakelike motions of the head and 

 neck being very noticeable. They looked like blood- 

 suckers and egg-suckers. They suggested something 

 extremely remorseless and cruel. One could under- 

 stand the alarm of rats when they discover one of 

 these fearless, subtle, and circumventing creatures 

 threading their holes. To flee must be like trying to 

 escape death itself." 



Very true, the rats are undoubtedly struck with 

 mortal terror on the approach of this their deadliest 



