Quadrupeds. 1245 



may have come to the aperture for air. This is at once distinctly proved by his dirty 

 foot-prints afterwards in the snow. It is also an admitted fact in the natural history 

 of the eel that it cannot exist without air. If, therefore, the water of any pond be con- 

 gealed for any length of time, and a small aperture be made in the ice, the greatest por- 

 tion of the eels in that pond will, in a short time, assemble around that opening for the 

 benefit of the admitted air. This interesting fact, I am informed may easily be con- 

 firmed by introducing a small bundle of straw into the water through the aperture, as 

 I am assured that many eels will soon imbed themselves in the straw, and if the hole 

 be kept open for a few days, a nice dish of this delicious fish may be generally drawn 

 out with the straw. This, I am told is no very unusual plan in taking eels from ponds 

 in this part of the country. The polecats, then, aware, either from instinct or habit, of 

 this propensity of the eels to assemble round any aperture in the ice for the benefit of 

 the admitted air, invariably search for them at every opening they meet with, and in 

 tracing their foot-prints in the snow as above described, it will frequently be discovered 

 that eels have been dragged from under the ice by these wily fishermen, and either de- 

 voured on the surface or carried to their dens to satisfy their hunger at some future 

 Opportunity. Bewick, to whom Mr. Frere alludes, states, if I recollect rightly, that 

 about a dozen eels were on one occasion taken from the den of a polecat; a strong 

 evidence of this animal's sagacity to provide against a famine. I may here also add 

 that I have known a polecat killed by a fisherman's dog on our extensive sands nearly 

 two miles below high-water-mark, and as herrings were taken at that very time in great 

 numbers in nets suspended on stakes, it is very probable that this polecat had been at- 

 tracted to near low-water-mark by the strong smell of captured herrings. Whilst on 

 the history of the polecat, I may perhaps be permitted to remark that this animal still 

 abounds in many districts of the North of England, though the gamekeepers use their 

 utmost endeavours to annihilate the breed. I do not however consider the polecat so 

 deadly an enemy to grouse, pheasants, partridges, hares, and rabbits, as either the 

 stoat or the common weasel, and am disposed to think that when it does feel inclined 

 to indulge in delicacies, it prefers rabbits, and most probably because it can enter their 

 burrows and secure this prey most easily. Neither is the polecat so delicate an 

 animal in its taste as the stoat. The latter seldom feeds on dead animals, and the 

 blood of its victim is evidently its most delicious repast; whilst the polecat will be 

 found frequently to act the part of a scavenger, and he contents to feed on the carcase 

 which has been left by the stoat. The polecat will eat frogs, and even the carcases of 

 sheep and other cattle, and as it is very inferior in activity to the stoat, and therefore 

 less fitted to secure delicious food, nature seems to have given it a less refined appe- 

 tite. — /. D. Banister ; Pilling, Garstang, Lancashire, January 2\st t 1846. 



Carnivorous propensity of the Hedgehog. — With reference to the interesting anec- 

 dote of the hedgehog (Zool. 1204), I think there can be little doubt of its carnivorous 

 habits. I never, indeed, saw it attack a bird, but the address and sanguinary courage 

 it shows in making war upon serpents, proclaim it at once a beast of prey. Neither 

 can this be an unnatural inclination brought on by confinement, as I have more than 

 once observed the viper to become scarce, or disappear entirely from the border of a 

 wood, after a hedgehog had taken up his quarters amongst them. But granted that 

 the animal is carnivorous, we have no need to think the worse of it on that account ; 

 the services it renders to man by destroying venomous reptiles, amply counterbalance 

 any petty depredations it may commit Indeed its remarkable exemption from the 

 effects of so many poisons seems to me an express provision of Providence to enable it 



