WEASELS.
[To THE EJUTOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mr. Unwin'e account of the two weasels, one helping the other, reminds me of one of the most interesting hedgerow scenes I ever witnessed. I was driving in the Cotswolds, and suddenly saw on a sunny bank by the roadside a mother weasel and a litter of little ones. On my stopping the carriage the old weasel took alarm, and rushed to the wall behind her and up it to a hole some 18 inches up, followed by her family scampering behind her. One by one they struggled up and in, all but one, the reckling of the family; he tried two or three times to get up, his mother anxiously looking out time and again to hasten him. At last, losing patience, she lowered herself head first, with her hind feet tight in the hole, grasped the young one by the middle of its back, and withdrew into the hole, dragging the puppy after her; but, alas! its body, so held, was too big for the hole. In vain she tugged and tugged, but it was no go; so she dropped it and repeated the performance, with the same result, to our great amusement and sympathy. Then she did what I regard as a wonderfully intelligent thing. She dropped it for the second time, reached down, and took it by the very tip of its nose, drew it delicately up and into the hole! Query, are carnivore more intelligent than graminivora? If so, let us beware of the human race becoming vegetarians.—
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