THE WEASEL. 453 



Sussex, who, writing in * The Zoologist' for 1877 (p. 291), stated 

 as follows: — 



" On the 5th Nov. last, when visiting a friend in the Co. Mayo, I saw a 

 Weasel one afternoon hunting about a stone wall at Currawn, near Achill 

 Sound, and, as I watched it for some time at the distance of only a few 

 yards, I could not possibly have been mistaken as to the species. I know 

 both the Stoat and Weasel too well to mistake the one for the other, and, 

 had I been aware at the time of the existence of any doubt on the subject, 

 I could easily have shot and forwarded the specimen." 



Thus the matter stands ; and we can only express a hope that, 

 having here brought together such scanty information as is at 

 present available, some of our naturalist friends in Ireland will 

 seriously give attention to it, and help to set at rest more com- 

 pletely this much-vexed question. 



In Scotland the Weasel appears to be generally distributed, 

 and Bell mentions one received from the extreme north. In the 

 summer of 1892, when accompanying the Committee appointed 

 by the Board of Agriculture to enquire into the plague of Field 

 Voles on the lowland sheep farms, we found that the Weasel was 

 well known to most of the farmers, shepherds, and gamekeepers, 

 in the counties of Roxburgh, Selkirk, Dumfries, and Kirkcud- 

 bright, and its extreme usefulness in killing the Short-tailed Field 

 Vole was generally admitted. 



Messrs. Harvie-Brown and Buckley include it in the ' Fauna 

 of Sutherland and Caithness' (p. 77), where it is stated to be not 

 so common as the Stoat, and not ascending the hills to any great 

 altitude, preferring the proximity of houses and farmyards. In 

 Caithness the two species are looked upon as the same animal, 

 and both receive the local name of " Whitteret " or " Futteret." 

 The last-mentioned authors, also, in their ' Fauna of Argyll and 

 the Inner Hebrides,' refer to the Weasel as being generally dis- 

 tributed and common over most of the mainland, but absent from 

 the Isles, in which all " returns of vermin killed " may be held 

 entirely to apply to the Stoat. On the mainland Weasels were 

 reported as travelling in companies, reaching new grounds in 

 either large family parties or several families joining forces, and 

 sometimes twenty or thirty might be trapped in a succession of 

 nights at the same spot. 



The late Edward Alston, at p. 12 of his 'Report on the Mam- 

 malia of the "West of Scotland,' remarked that the Weasel is 



