THERE is also in Russia and Poland, especially in Volhinia, an animal which the Russians call perewiazka, and przewiaska by the Polanders, a name we may translate the girdled weasel. This animal is not so big as the pole-cat; it is covered with a whitish hair, transversally striped with a yellowish red, which appears like so many girdles. It lives in the woods, and burrows in the earth; its skin is sought after and makes a very beautiful fur.
THERE is found at Casan, and in the provinces watered by the Wolga, and even in Austria, a small animal called souslik in the Russian language, which furnishes a beautiful fur. In figure and shortness of tail, it greatly resembles the short-tailed-field-mouse; but what distinguishes it from the mouse or rat kind, is its coat, which is in every part sprinkled with small spots of a glossy and shining white; these spots are exceedingly small, and placed at a little distance from each other; they are more apparent upon the loins, than on the shoulders and head. Mr. Pennant, an English gentleman, thoroughly versed in Natural History, favoured me with one of these sousliks, which had been sent him from Austria, as an animal naturalists were not acquainted with. I soon recognised it to be the same as that of which I had a skin in my possession, and of which M. Sanchez had furnished me with the following account. “The rats called sousliks, are taken in great numbers in the salt vessels in the river Kama, which descends from Solikamski, where the salt pits are, and falls into the Wolga above the town of Casan. The Wolga from Simbuski to Somtof, is covered with these salt vessels, in which these animals are taken, as well as in the lands which border on those rivers. They have been named souslik, that is, dainty-mouthed, because they are very fond of salt.”
SUPPLEMENT
WE have since learnt, that these animals generally live in the desart, and burrow in the sides of the mountains where the earth is blackish; that some of them make their holes seven or eight feet long, at the end of which they form different apartments for storing up provisions for the winter, which consist of ears of corn, peas, lint, and hemp seeds: or if they be not cultivated lands, different kinds of herbs, all of which they keep separate in different parts of their holes, to which they have from two to five entrances, always winding, and the mouths of them sometimes seven feet asunder; they also dig holes for their habitations separate from their magazines. Besides grain and herbs they feed upon young mice, but are unable to encounter the full-grown ones. The females have from two to five young ones at a time, which are first blind, and without hair; nor do they begin to see till after the hair appears.