Rat or Stoat ?
The natural history of the cornstack (several of which I'have recently seen threshed) is very suggeative of what is often called the balance of nature—a nature, it must be confessed, often •" red in tooth and claw." From the base of one wheat-stack escaped three young stoat% and they had scarcely made good their retreat when two dead rats were found, obviously the victims of the stoats. I once saw the account of an estate not too far from London which recorded the killing of a few rats and a very large number of stoats. I cannot but believe that the concentrated war on stoats by keepers has been-one cause of the great multiplication of rats ;" and the rat is the prime enemy, not the stoat. A neighbouring farmer will not allow, any Weasel to be killed on his farm. "The more the better," he says. It is denied, though not wholly corroborated, that weasels kill rats; but- it is in my viov undoubted that the two do not "consent to a mutual relation," as in the case of the red and grey squirrel ; and the rat leaves the pitch of the weasel, not vice versa.
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