RABBITS AND FERRETS.
A letter, full of personal observation, reaches me from General Higginson, whose knowledge of natural history, especially in County Down, is as extensive as Sam Weller's of London. He writes :--
" If you will allow me to say so, I do not think that the death of the ferret, in the way described by you, is as unusual as you seem to think. When I was a boy there was very little that I did not know about ferretting, and I, on several occasions, lost ferrets in the way you describe. Rabbits have a trick of making ' blind ' holes in their burrows, and they are nearly always (except when the soil is sand on gravel) made so small that,. by blowing itself out, the rabbit can quite fill the-hole ; and in this way the enemy, whatever it may be cannot- get at his head. Over and over again I have found rabbits with all the fur scraped off their rumps by the ferret. We called these blind holes ` pouches' (pronounced pooches '), and I have taken as many as eight rabbits out of a pooch. What happens is this : if you put more than one ferret into a small burrow, there is always a danger of it ; the rabbit runs into the pooch and blows himself out, and the ferret starts to scratch ; other rabbits in their fright, or driven by other ferrets, run into the pooch, and so shut in the first ferret and smother him, though it is perfectly astounding what an amount of smothering ferrets will stand. . . . In my opinion the ferret is the bravest animal in the world ; fear is quite unknown to him, and he will fight to the last gasp. I have seen foxes, cats, whole families of stoats bolting from a ferret. I have lost a ferret once from a fox, and I think once from a cat, but I am not certain, and I am convinced that the majority of ferrets are lost by being shut into pooches.' . . . I had one man who taught them to come to his whistle, and I have seen them playing on the floor of his house with his children. I have seen him crying when one was shot by a friend of mine, and it was buried next day in a tin with honours by the whole family."
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