THE WEASEL. 
SOI 
vermin seem to constitute its general food ; and 
we must allow that it arrests their increase, by an 
activity and perseverance truly astonishing. It 
hunts for the beetle in the grass ; it follows the 
mole through her subterraneous mazes; it drives 
the rats from the bottom of haystacks, and worries 
them in the corn-ricks, and never allows them 
either peace or quiet in the sewers and ditches where 
they take up their abode. That man only, who has 
seen a weasel go into a corn-stack, can form a just 
idea of the horror which its approach causes to the 
Hanoverians collected there for safety and plunder. 
The whole stack is in commotion — whilst these 
destroyers of corn seem to be put to their last shifts, 
if you may judge by the extraordinary kind of 
whining which goes on amongst them, and by the 
attempts which they make to bolt from the invaded 
premises. No Irishman ever shunned th^ hated pre- 
sence of Dutch William in the Emerald Isle with 
greater marks of horror than those which rats betray 
when a weasel comes unexpectedly amongst them. 
One only regrets that this stranger rat did not meet 
a hungry weasel on its first landing in our country ; 
for, although the indigenous English black rat was 
known to be far too fond of self, still it was by no 
means so fierce and rapacious as the German new 
comer — at least, I have always heard my father say 
so ; but I cannot state any thing from actual ex- 
perience, as the old English rat has entirely dis- 
appeared ^*rom these parts. 
But, of all people in the land, our gardeners have 
most reason to protect the weasel. They have not 
