8 
MAMMALS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
A careful examination failed to detect any injury whatever. After a time it slowly 
recovered, and we turned it loose again.” Several examples of the Stoat have 
occurred in the county, in partial “ Ermine ” or winter dress. I have not seen any 
purely white local specimens, but the Museum Donation-book records : — “ Stoat 
in its winter dress, January 13th, 1851,” and another, also “ in winter dress, 
January 30th, 1851 ; both presented by Joseph Knight, Esq.” 3Iajor Gregory 
Knight informs me that they were killed at Blaby by a gamekeeper in the employ 
of his late father. ]\Ir. Thos. Woodcock, writing from Katcliffe-on-the-Wreake in 
1885, said : — “ One obtained near here pure white.” Col. F. Palmer also has one 
or two in winter dress. 
In Rutland. — Mr. Horn writes (1888) “ I saw several last year in partial 
winter dress in ‘ the gamekeeper’s museum ’ in Wardley Wood — one completely 
white with the exception of a small brown patch on the cheek.” 
WEASEL. Fiitorius vulgaris (Gmelin). 
“ Cane.” 
Resident and generally distributed. — Harley remarked : — “ This species hunts 
down the Grey Rat with wonderful daring and spirit. It also preys on the Water 
Rat, and traces out the runs of that quiet, harmless animal with much address and 
great cunning, surpassing even the adroitness and agility of the Ferret.” One, 
presented by Mr. Thos. Greaves to the Leicester Museum on 14th Nov., 1851, was 
killed in Princess Street, close to the Museum. 
During the early part of Dec., 1856, according to a MS. note dated 5th Dec., 
1856, by Harley, who examined the specimen, a Weasel, pure white even to the 
extremity of the tail, was captured near Leicester. Bell, in his ‘ British 
Quadrupeds,’ remarks on the rarity of such variation in the Weasel, and Harley 
states that the white specimen above noticed is the only one of the kind he ever 
met with. It might be supposed that Harley had possibly mistaken a small Stoat 
for a Weasel, but he added : — “The Stoat — its congener — becomes white in the 
dreary season of the winter, throughout, save the tip of its tail, the hair of which 
generally remains black. The change of dress and the variegated exterior of the 
Weasel is certainly of less common occurrence, if not very rare.” I purchased 
from Ludlam, a bird-stuffer, a purely white specimen said by him to have been 
killed at Tooley Park, Earl Shilton, in Aug., 1870, by a Jlr. Jacques. I cannot, 
however, get confirmation of this, so give the note for what it is worth. One — a 
male — was killed by a Dog, at a rick at Aylestone Mill, on 2nd Oct., 1885, and was 
purchased for the Museum on account of a slight variation, the upper surface of 
the left front paw being white. Mr. W. Whitaker, of Wistow, wrote me, in Jan., 
1886, of a light-yellow variety killed by a Cat at ^Market Bosworth, and in the 
hands of the bird-stuffer there, to whom I wrote for details, only, unfortunately, to 
find him dead. 
