I 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
37 
WEASEL. 
A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite rooks in one 
nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before 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 was sur- 
prised to find that 
their bills, legs, fe^t, 
and claws were milk- 
white."^ 
A shepherd saw, as 
he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter : 
were not these the Emberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool.1 
No doubt they were. 
A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been 
caught in the fields after it was come to its full 
colours. In about a year it began to look dingy ; 
and, blackening every succeeding year, it became 
coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was 
hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour of 
animals ! The pied and mottled colours of domes- 
ticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, 
various, and unusual food. 
I had remarked, for years, that the root of the 
cuckoo-pint {arum) was frequently scratched out of 
the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy 
weather. After observing, with some exactness, 
myself, and getting others to do the same, we found 
it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The 
roDt of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent.f 
ARUM. 
the form being a little more lengthened. These do not agree with the weasels 
and stoats taken in traps, &c. , and hence the delusion is kept up. 
Mitford has the following note in his edition. "This I believe to be a pretty 
gsneral error among the county-people, also in other counties. This imaginary 
animal in Suffolk is called the ' mouse hunt, ' from its being supposed to live on 
mice. To discover the truth of this report, I managed to have several of these 
animals brought to me ; all of which I find to be the common weasel. The 
error I conceive partly to have arisen from this animal, like most others, 
appearing less than its real size, when running or attempting to escape, a 
circumstance well known to the hunters of India, with respect to larger animals, 
as the tiger, " &c. 
* We possess a large rookery, and although we have never had an entire white 
or cream coloured variety, scarcely a year passes without some young being 
observed with more or less white in the plumage, and in these the bill and feet, 
as well as the claws are also white. 
t We have not observed the roots of the arum scratched for as mentioned. 
