nQ STOAT. Class I. 



up with a stick, to which is fastened a baited 

 string, which when the animals nibble, the stone 

 falls down and crushes them to death. The 

 Laplanders take them in the same manner, only 

 instead of stones make use of two logs of 

 wood.* The stoat is sometimes found white in 

 Great Britain, but not frequently, and then it 

 is called a white weesel. That animal is also 

 found white, but may be easily distinguished 

 from the other in the ermine state, by the tail, 

 which in the weesel is of a light tawny brown. 

 With us the former is observed to begin to 

 change its color from brown to white in Novem- 

 ber, and to begin to resume the brown the be- 

 ginning of March. 



The natural history of this creature is much, 

 the same with that of the weesel, its food being 

 birds, rabbets, mice, 8$c. its agility the same, 

 and its scent equally foetid : it is much more 

 common in England than that animal. 



* Ocuvres de Maupertuis, iii. 187. 



