OF SELBORNE. 
53 
LETTER XY. 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, March 30, 1768. 
OME intelligent country people have a notion 
that we have in these parts a species of the 
genus must elinum, besides the weasel^ stoat, 
ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, 
not much bigger than a field mouse, but 
much longer, which they call a cane/^ This piece of intel- 
ligence can be little depended on ; but farther inquiry may 
be made.^ 
WEASEL. 
A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white 
rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them be- 
fore they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed 
them, to the regret of the owner, who would have been 
glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I 
saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and 
^ Cane is a provincial name for the female of the common weasel, 
which is usually one-fourth smaller than the male.— Ed. 
