20 FARM VERMIN, HELPFUL AND HURTFUL. 



between the stoat and the weasel. The stoat is consider- 

 ably the larger of the two, is brown above, and has a rather 

 long, somewhat bushy tail, the tip of which always remains 

 black ; the weasel is of a paler reddish brown above, with a 

 tail uniform in colour with the back, and of uniform thick- 

 ness. 



As the rat forms a favourite food of the stoat, so even to 

 a greater degree do various kinds of mice that of the weasel ; 

 the latter also destroys many moles, rats, and water-voles, 

 and, although not on all occasions guiltless of the blood of 

 young game and poultry, is even less harmful in these 

 respects than its congener the stoat, the burden of whose 

 sins it often has to bear. The late Professor Bell relates 

 that, having concealed himself on one occasion close to a 

 weasel's nest containing young, he saw the parent bring, in 

 a little more than an hour, five mice for her young. He 

 caused the female to drop the fifth, which he picked up, 

 and found that it was a specimen of the field vole {Arvicola 

 agrestis)^ commonly known as the short-tailed field mouse or 

 grass mouse ; Professor Bell had no doubt, from the general 

 resemblance which the other four bore to this one, that 

 they were all of this species. Now the significance of this 

 fact will at once be apparent when we reflect that this same 

 Arvicola agrestis is the little animal the depredations and 

 overwhelming abundance of which in Scotland were the 

 occasion, in 1892, of the appointment of a Departmiental 

 Committee to inquire into and report upon the circum- 

 stances attending the existing plague of voles in some of the 

 southern counties of Scotland, and upon preventive and 

 remedial measures. The minutes of evidence and appen- 

 dices, emxbodied in a Blue-book, extending to 98 pages, 

 exclusive of the Report of the Committee, presented to both 

 Houses of Parliament, together with a pamphlet on the 

 subject issued by the Board of Agriculture, are now before 

 me. The information contained therein is of the greatest 



