56 
MAMMALIA. 
She will defend her young with the utmost desperation against any 
assailant, and sacrifice her own life rather than desert them; and 
even when the nest is torn up by a dog, rushing out with great fury, 
and fastening upon his nose or lips.” * 
PUTORIUS ERMINEA (Linn.) Cuvier. 
Ermine; Stoat; Large Weasel; “ White Weasel"; “ Brown Weasel 
The Ermine is a common resident and, like the preceding species, 
becomes white at the approach of winter. Like it also, it wanders 
over different kinds of territory, and is frequently taken in traps set 
for more valuable fur. In addition to the small game mentioned as 
constituting the larder of the Least Weasel, the Ermine attacks and 
slays animals many times its own size and weight. Thus the house 
rat, squirrels, rabbits, and even the great northern hare fall easy 
victims before its superior prowess. It is very fond of the ruffed 
grouse, and its proneness to depopulate the poultry- yard is notorious. 
Audubon tells us that he has “known forty well-grown fowls to have 
been killed in one night by a single Ermine.” And on our own 
premises a Stoat once killed fifteen doves in a single night ! Rats 
and mice also it slays by dozens when opportunity presents. Unlike 
others of its tribe it does not, when game is plenty, devour the flesh 
of its victims, but merely eats their brains or sucks their blood; and 
when feasted to satiety continues its work of carnage till scarcity of 
material, or bodily fatigue, induce it to take a temporary respite. 
Ever victorious, of pre-eminent assurance, reliant on its own superi- 
ority and power, and confident of success, this indomitable little 
animal is, in courage and ferocity, insatiate bloodthirstiness, and bold 
audacity, almost without parallel in the history of mammalia. Hun- 
ger plays but little part in the slaughter, the war of destruction and 
extermination, waged against its multifarious prey by this terrestrial 
vampire, but pitiless, relentless, wasteful in the extreme, it kills for 
* Quoted in Coues' Fur-Bearing Animals, 1877, p. 109. 
