3oi Ground Vermin. 



to obtain little delicacies to suit the fancy of the female, 

 or, perhaps, for the young, that they may consume flesh 

 at the earliest possible stage of their existence. Such 

 " delicacies " generally consist of field-mice, small birds, 

 frogs, an occasional water-vole, shrews, young rabbits and 

 hares, in some cases a partridge, also, but rarely, a wood- 

 cock. These are but some of the many animals which the 

 stoat provides for its mate and progeny, and is always most 

 careful to lay or store them in a neat, methodical manner. 

 Much as the stoat resembles the fitch, so also does it in 

 many ways differ from it, and not more so than in the 

 haunts which it prefers and the habits it follows. With 

 regard to the former, while the polecat, as we have re- 

 marked, has an undoubted tendency to become solitary, 

 or rather semi-solitary, the stoat, on the other hand, is in- 

 clined to the opposite, and it must be observed that they 

 do not live even in single pairs wide apart from others (the 

 breeding-time, of course, excepted), but congregate in 

 or adjoining some favoured spot in a wood, brake, or 

 plantation, where they form a little colony amongst them- 

 selves for mutual protection and defence. Sometimes 

 they choose a small or a large area of rough or broken 

 ground in a field, more especially such heaps of big 

 stones or boulders as we occasionally observe to have been 

 collected from the surface and removed to an out-of-the- 

 way corner, or, perhaps, the very centre of a field ; some- 

 times long rough rows of such stones or boulders, along 

 the side of a stream, and generally plentifully overgrown 

 with briars and rough surface growth. Again, they are 

 found about old lime, gravel, and stone pits, and 

 beneath piles of bark, wood, and faggots in fact, 

 any place at all resembling one or combining all the 

 features mentioned. In such favoured spots as these does 

 the stoat find a suitable neighbourhood in which to make 



