There is one method of capturing weasels which I have found very useful, though it entails the loss of an innocent live bird in many cases. Form a sort of oblong square with brushwood and close it all in except two narrow lanes leading to the center, at which point peg down a young chicken or bird. Set the traps, as closely concealed as possible at the ends of these lanes, so that neither by ingress nor egress can the weasel escape without the chance of being caught. Each trap should be set very lightly, and in some dry ditch near a covert, or by the side of a wall, or, in fact, in any likely spot recognized by the trained eye.

Here is another bad character in the polecat, or foumart, and as it is the largest of the two, it commonly does most damage, though in saying this I really am not sure I can place either or them first in this respect. The weasel and polecat are unmitigated robbers and assassins, and according to opportunity are given indifferently to bad habits of the worst character. The polecat is, however, nearly sixteen inches from that to eighteen inches in length, and its bite is terrific and sometimes poisonous. Beware, therefore, of it when releasing one caught in a trap; in fact, as I before impressed on you, “kill it first.” The body of the polecat has a woolly undercoat of pale yellow, while the longer hairs are of a deep glossy brown.

Its habits are very similar to those of the weasel, and it commonly kills chickens by biting the head off and then sucking the blood, leaving perhaps a dozen bodies as mementoes of its visitation. I have known it to catch fish, and I caught one in a trap, set as I supposed at the time, for an otter. The otter turned out to be a polecat, however, which measured, exclusive of the tail, fourteen inches. Eels seemed to be the prey for which it took water, as I had previously found the remains of several half-eaten on the shore.

This circumstance was a strange one to me, and altogether exceptional, until I looked up my natural history books, when I found that Bewick refers to a similar fact in his “Quadrupeds.” He says:—“During a severe storm one of these animals was traced in the snow from the side of a rivulet to its hole at some distance from it.... Its hole was examined, the foumart taken, and eleven fine eels were discovered as the fruits of its nocturnal exertions. The marks on the snow were found to have been made by the motions of the eels while in the creature’s mouth.” We have no reason for doubting Bewick, but it is certain that the polecat must have extracted the eels from either beneath stones or mud, where, during cold weather such as described, it is their infallible habit to retire in a semi-torpid condition.

In trapping it use a strong gin, and set very lightly. The baits are precisely similar to those for the weasel. Be, above all, careful to use the naked hands as little as possible.

[III.
RATS.]

Rats may, I think, fairly lay claim to being the most mischievous of all vermin. They are fellows of irreclaimably bad habits, and never so happy as when devouring or destroying something. Artemus Ward has placed it on record that “Injins is pisen wherever you meet ’em,” and the same might be said of rats. In that exquisitely whimsical poem of Browning’s, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” we are told that the townspeople were plagued emphatically with

“Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,