214 
Vermin of the Farm. 
of the rat it looked at first as if he would shake off his opponent 
and fling him easily aside ; but the stoat clung with such tenacity 
to the rat’s neck, that it was impossible to dislodge him ; the efibrts 
of the rat got weaker and weaker, and finally he sank to the 
ground, and with a few convulsive kicks succumbed to the brave 
little stoat, who, with open mouth and panting sides, like a 
little dog, stood over him in triumph. After a short interval 
the rat was again seized and half-carried, half-pushed, off the 
road into the furze-clad common, where we left the victor in 
peace to enjoy his well-earned supper. 
But it may be said, are not stoats and weasels vermin ? Do 
they not destroy poultry, game, and many other things besides 
rats ? and if so, ought they not to be themselves destroyed ? It 
is a choice of evils. No one who has had any opportunity of 
studying the habits of stoats will pretend for a moment that they 
confine their attention to rats. They are very fond of young 
rabbits, and we have seen them bolting them from their burrows 
like a ferret, but we have more often seen them carrying field- 
mice in their mouths (just as a retriever carries a rabbit), and 
have come to the conclusion that rats and mice are their natural 
prey, and that they would kill numbers of them if they were 
not trapped, or shot, as soon as they show themselves near the 
buildings, or stacks, in which the rats and mice have their 
strongholds. 
The gradual decrease of the so-called old English black rat 
{Mus rattus) in this country has long been noted. So far back 
as 1768 the royal ratcatcher, to whom allusion has been already 
made (p. 21 1 note) remarked a difference in the habits of the black 
and brown rats, and an animosity of the latter to the former. 
“ The black ones,” he says, “ do not burrow and run into shores 
as the others do, but chiefly lie in the ceilings and wainscots in 
houses, and in outhouses they lie under the ridge tiles, and 
behind the rafters, and run about the side-plates ; but their 
numbers are greatly diminished to what they were formerly, 
not many of them being now left, for the Norway rats always 
drive them out and kill them wherever they can come at them ; 
as a proof of which I was once exercising my employment at a 
gentleman’s house, and when the night came that I appointed 
to catch, I set all my traps going as usual, and in the lower 
part of the house in the cellars I caught the Norway rats, but 
in the upper part of the house I took nothing but black rats. 
I then put them together into a great cage to keep them alive 
till the morning, that the gentleman might see them, when the 
Norway rats killed the black rats immediately, and devoured 
them in my presence.” 
