312 
YERTEBRATA. 
the same manner as the tracks of moles in Britain. These passages ran in a serpentine direction, 
and near the hole or dwelling-place the circles were multiplied, as if to render the approach more 
intricate. 
The same graphic voyager gives a lively description of a captive ermine: "He was a fierce lit- 
tle fellow, and the instant he obtained daylight in his new dwelling, he flew at the bars, and 
shook them with the greatest fury, uttering a very shrill, passionate cry, and emitting the strong, 
musky smell which I formerly noticed. No threats or teasing could induce him to retire to the 
sleeping-place, and whenever he did so of his own accord, the slightest rubbing on the bars was 
suflicient to bring him out to the attack of his tormentors. He soon took food from the hand, 
but not until he had first used every exertion to reach and bite the fingers which conveyed it. 
This boldness gave me great hopes of being able to keep my little captive alive through the win- 
ter, but he was killed by an accident." 
Sir John Richardson states that the ermine is a bold animal, and often domesticates itself in 
the habitations of the American fur-traders, where it may be heard the live-long night pursuing 
the white-footed mouse. He remarks that, according to Indian report, this species brings forth 
ten or twelve young at a time. In this country it produces about five in April or May. 
In Siberia, ermines are taken in traps baited w^ith flesh ; and in Norway they are either shot 
with blunt arrows, or taken in traps made of two flat stones, one being propped up with a stick, 
to which is fastened a baited string. This the animal nibbles, when the stone falls and crushes 
it. Two logs of wood are used for the same purpose, and in the same manner, in Lapland. 
In the United States the ermine usually passes for a weasel, its habits being the same as those 
of the ermine of Europe. In the same manner it pursues the rabbit and hare, and in the same 
manner invades the poultry-yard. A single ermine has been known to kill forty full-grown fowls 
in a single night. Its destruction of mice is enormous, and probably it is rather a benefactor to 
the fai-mers, despite its depredations, Though nocturnal in its habits, it is seen at all hours of 
the day. It does not dig its own burrows, but makes its nest in heaps of stones, in hollows be- 
neath the roots of trees, or in the vacated burrows of the ground-squirrel. It is nowhere common, 
but is occasionally seen over nearly the whole of North America. 
The Common Weasel of Europe, P. vulgaris ; the Belette of the French, Donnola^ Ballotula, 
and Benula of the Italians, and Wisel of the Germans, is one of the most remarkable of 
known animals. "The stoat," says Mr, Bell, "is brown above, dirty white beneath; the tail 
always black at the tip, longer and more bushy than that of the weasel, and the former animal is 
twice as large as its elegant little congener. The weasel, on the other hand, is red above, pure 
white beneath, the tail red and uniform. Their habits also, though generally similar, are in many 
of their details considerably distinct; and we are fully borne out by observation in saying that 
the accusations against the weasel of the mischief which he is said to perpetrate in the farm-yard 
and the hen-roost, as well as among game of every description — on hares and rabbits no less than 
on the feathered tribes — are principally due to the stoat. It is not meant to be asserted that the 
weasel will not, when driven by hunger, boldly attack the stock of the poultry-yard, or occasion- 
ally make free with a young rabbit, or a sleeping partridge ; but that its usual prey is of a much 
more ignoble character is proved by daily observation. Mice of every description, the field and 
the water vole, rats, moles, and small birds, are their ordinary food ; and from the report of un- 
prejudiced observers, it would appear that this pretty animal ought rather to be fostered as a 
destroyer of vermin than extirpated as a noxious depredator. Above all, it should not be mo- 
lested in barns, ricks, or granaries, in which situations it is of great service in destroying the col- 
onies of mice which infest them. Those only who have witnessed the multitudinous numbers in 
which these little pests are found, in wheat-ricks especially, and have seen the manner in which 
the interior is sometimes drilled, as it were, in every direction by their runs, can at all appreciate 
the amount of their depredations; and surely the occasional abduction of a chicken or a duckling, 
supposing it to be even much more frequently chargeable against the weasel than it really is, 
would be but a trifling set-off" against the benefit produced by the destruction of those swarms of 
little thieves." 
Mr. Bell adds, as ground for this defense of the weasel, that a friend of his assured him that at 
