WHITE WEASEL. 
59 
it mounted a tree and laid itself flat on a limb about twenty feet from 
tbe ground, fi'om which it was finally shot. We have ascertained by 
successful experiments, repeated more than a hundred times, that the 
Ermine can be employed, in the manner of the ferret of Europe, in 
driving our American rabbit from the burrow into which it has retreat- 
ed. In one instance, the Ermine employed had been captured only a 
few days before, and its canine teeth were filed in order to prevent its 
destroying the rabbit; a cord was placed around its neck to secure 
its return. It pursued the hare through all the windings of its burrow 
and forced it to the mouth, where it could be taken in a net, or by the 
hand. In winter, after a snow storm, the ruffed grouse has a habit of 
plunging into the loose snow, where it remains at times for one or 
two days. In this passive state the Ermine sometimes detects and de- 
stroys it. In an unsuccessful attempt at domesticating this grouse by 
fastening its feet to a board in the mode adopted with the stool pigeon, 
and placing it high on a shelf, an Ermine which we had kept as a pet, 
found its way by the curtains of the window and put an end to our 
experiment by eating off the head of our grouse. 
Notwithstanding all these mischievous and destructive habits, it is 
doubtful whether the Ermine is not rather a benefactor than an enemy 
to the farmer, ridding his granaries and fields of many depredators 
on the product of his labour, that would devour ten times the value 
of the poultry and eggs which, at long and uncertain intervals, it 
occasionally destroys. A mission appears to have been assigned it 
by Providence to lessen the rapidly multiplying number of mice of 
various species and the smaller rodentia. 
The white-footed mouse is destructive to the grains in the wheat 
fields and in the stacks, as well as the nurseries of fruit trees. Le Conte’s 
pine-mouse is injurious to the Irish and sweet potato crops, causing 
more to rot by nibbling holes into them than it consumes, and Wilson’s 
meadow-mouse lessens our annual product of hay by feeding on the 
grasses, and by its long and tortuous galleries among their roots. 
Wherever an Ermine has taken up its residence, the mice in its vicin- 
ity for half a mile round have been found rapidly to diminish in num- 
ber. Their active little enemy is able to force its thin vermiform body 
into the burrows, it follows them to the end of their galleries, and destroys 
whole families. We have on several occasions, after a light snow, fol- 
lowed the trail of this weasel through fields and meadows, and witnessed 
the immense destruction which it occasioned in a single night. It enters 
every hole under stumps, logs, stone heaps and fences, and evidences of 
its bloody deeds are seen in the mutilated remains of the mice scattered 
