The Balance
The other day I ventured to suggest, in opposition to the view established by keepers, that the balance of Nature in our well-balanced island would be better preserved if stoats were regarded as in some aspects friends rather than foes. A day or two later a gardener told me this tale. On arriving in the morning, he went straight towards a trap he had set over night for the rats that had been attacking his stored potatoes. As he approached the place he found two rats lying dead in the open. When he reached the trap he found in it not a rat but a large stoat. He felt sure that the rats had been kill by the stoat. Doubtless the balance is not always nicely kept natural causes: we must shoot pigeons ; and the rooks, if excessive in number, become a curse ; but all conservers should think twi before destroying any natural enemy of the rat.
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