VANISHED ANIMALS.
:Years ago I saw an estate book going back a good hundred years, in which the exact head of all vermin was kept, as the keeper—so-called—was given a per capita grant. The items that astonished me were the extraordinary numbers of stoats and polecats. The estate was within thirty miles of London, yet more stoats were killed than rats. This suggests that we have quite altered the ratio of such fauna. Stoats and rats do not co-exist. Nor do rats and weasels. It is a dis- puted point whether weasels actually attack rats. Indeed the balance of evidence seems to be against the older view that they killed rats ; but it is scarcely to be doubted that their presence drives or keeps rats away. Polecats are virtually exterminated from most of their old haunts. I knew of one (killed, curiously enough, by foxhounds near the Fitzwilliam kennels) about the year 1880 ; and that is the last. Are any left in the southern half of England ? The multiplicity of the rats at any rate among rodents depends not on a Cycle of seasons, but on the destruction of their natural enemies, especially, some think, the stoat. We should also see an increase of the brown squirrel if its imported rival, the grey; were kept under.
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