ERMELO, a district and town of the Transvaal. The district lies in the south-east of the province and is traversed by the Drakensberg. In it are Lake Chrissie, the only true lake in the country, and the sources of the Vaal, Olifants, Komati, and Usuto rivers, which rise within 30 m. of one another. The region has a general elevation of about 5500 ft. and is fine agricultural and pastoral country, besides containing valuable minerals, including coal and gold. Ermelo town, pop. (1904) 1451, is by rail 175 m. S.E. of Johannesburg, and 74 m. S.S.W. of Machadodorp on the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway. A government experimental farm, with some 1000 acres of plantations, is maintained here.
| Ermine or Stoat (Putorius ermineus). |
ERMINE, an alternative name for the stoat (Putorius ermineus), apparently applicable in its proper sense only when the animal is in its white winter coat. This animal measures 10 in. in length exclusive of the tail, which is about 4 in. long, and becomes bushy towards the point. The fur in summer is reddish brown above and white beneath, changing in the winter of northern latitudes to snowy whiteness, except at the tip of the tail, which at all seasons is black. In Scottish specimens this change in winter is complete, but in those found in the southern districts of England it is usually only partial, the ermine presenting during winter a piebald appearance. The white colour is evidently protective, enabling the animals to elude the observations of their enemies, and to steal unobserved on their prey. It also retains heat better than a dark covering, and may thus serve to maintain an equable temperature at all seasons within the body. The colour change seems to be due to phagocytes devouring the pigment-bodies of the hair, and not to a moult.
The species is a native of the temperate and subarctic zones of the Old World, and is represented in America by a form which can scarcely be regarded as specifically distinct. It inhabits thickets and stony places, and frequently makes use of the deserted burrows of moles and other underground mammals. Exceedingly sanguinary in disposition, and agile in its movements, it feeds principally on rats, water-rats and rabbits, which it pursues with pertinacity and boldness, hence the name stoat, signifying bold, by which it is commonly known. It takes readily to water, and will even climb trees in pursuit of prey. It is particularly destructive to poultry and game, and has often been known to attack hares, fixing itself to the throat of its victim, and defying all the efforts of the latter to disengage it. The female brings forth five young ones about the beginning of summer. The winter coat of the ermine forms one of the most valuable of commercial furs, and is imported in enormous quantities from Norway, Sweden, Russia and Siberia. It is largely used for muffs and tippets, and as a trimming for state robes, the jet black points of the tails being inserted at regular intervals as an ornament. In the reign of Edward III. the wearing of ermine was restricted to members of the royal family; but it now enters into almost all state robes, the rank and position of the wearer being in many cases indicated by the presence or absence, and the disposition, of the black spots. (See also [Fur].)
ERMINE STREET. Documents and writers of the 11th and succeeding centuries occasionally mention four “royal roads” in Britain—Icknield Street, Erning or Ermine Street, Watling Street and Foss Way—as standing apart from all other existing roads and enjoying the special protection of the king. Unfortunately these authorities are not at all agreed as to their precise course; the roads themselves do not occur as specially privileged in actual legal or other practice, and it is likely that the category of Four Roads is the invention of a lawyer or an antiquary. The names are, however, attested to some extent by early charters which name them among other roads, as boundaries. From these charters we know that Icknield Street ran along the Berkshire downs and the Chilterns, that Ermine Street ran more or less due north through Huntingdonshire, that Watling Street ran north-west across the midlands from London to Shrewsbury, and Foss diagonally to it from Lincoln or Leicester to Bath and mid-Somerset. This evidence only proves the existence of these roads in Saxon and Norman days. But they all seem to be much older. Icknield Street is probably a prehistoric ridgeway along the downs, utilized perhaps by the Romans near its eastern end, but in general not Roman. Ermine Street coincides with part of a line of Roman roads leading north from London through Huntingdon to Lincoln. This line is followed by the Old North Road through Cheshunt, Buntingford, Royston, and Huntingdon to Castor near Peterborough; and thence it can be traced through lanes and byways past Ancaster to Lincoln. Watling Street is the Roman highway from London by St Alban’s (Verulamium) to Wroxeter near Shrewsbury (Viroconium). Foss is the Roman highway from Lincoln to Bath and Exeter. Hence it has been supposed, and is still frequently alleged, that the Four Roads were the principal highways of Roman Britain. This, however, is not the case. Icknield Street is not Roman and the three roads which follow Roman lines, Ermine Street, Watling Street, and Foss, held no peculiar position in the Romano-British road system (see [Britain]: Roman). In later times, the names Ermine Street, Icknield Street and Watling Street have been applied to other roads of Roman or supposed Roman origin. This, however, is wholly the work of Elizabethan or subsequent antiquaries and deserves no credence.
The derivations of the four names are unknown. Icknield, Ermine and Watling may be from English personal names; Foss, originally Fos, seems to be the Lat. fossa in its occasional medieval sense of a bank of upcast earth or stones, such as the agger of a road.
(F. J. H.)