Rabbit, the Ruffed Grouse, and domestic fowl, are ten times its own size. 
It is a notorious and hated depredator of the poultry-house, and we have 
known forty full-grown fowls to have been killed in one night by a single 
Ermine. Satiated with the >lood of probably a single fowl, the rest, 
like the flock slaughtered by the wolf in the sheepfold, were destroyed 
in obedience to a law of nature—an instinctive propensity to kill. We 
have traced the footsteps of this blood-sucking little animal on the snow, 
pursuing the trail of the American Rabbit, and although it could not 
overtake its prey by superior speed, yet the timid Hare soon took refuge 
in the hollow of a tree, or in a hole dug by the Marmot or Skunk. 
Thither it was pursued by the Ermine and destroyed, the skin and other 
remains at the mouth of the burrow bearing evidence of the fact. We 
observed an Ermine, after having captured a Hare of the above species, 
first behead it and then drag the body some twenty yards over the fresh 
fallen snow, beneath which it was concealed, and the snow lightly 
pressed down over it, the little prowler displaying thereby a habit of 
which we became aware for the first time on that occasion. To avoid a 
dog that was in close pursuit, it mounted a tree and laid itself flat on a 
limb about twenty feet from the ground, from 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 the American Rabbit from the burrow into 
which it has retreated. 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 its windings in 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 one or 
two days. In this passive state the Ermine sometimes detects and de- 
stroys it. 
“ 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 labor, that would devour ten times the value of the 
poultry and eggs which, at long and uncertain intervals, it occasionally 
destroys. A mission seems to have been assigned it by Providence to 
lessen the rapidly multiplying number of mice of various species, and 
other small rodents. 
“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 
3 
