e in England, in
comparison of the plenty that is to be seen in other countries, and so
earnestly are the inhabitants bent to root them out, that, except it had
been to bear thus with the recreations of their superiors in this behalf,
it could not otherwise have been chosen but that they should have been
utterly destroyed by many years agone.

I might here intreat largely of other vermin, as the polecat, the miniver,
the weasel, stote, fulmart, squirrel, fitchew, and such like, which Cardan
includeth under the word _Mustela_: also of the otter, and likewise of the
beaver, whose hinder feet and tail only are supposed to be fish. Certes
the tail of this beast is like unto a thin whetstone, as the body unto a
monstrous rat: as the beast also itself is of such force in the teeth that
it will gnaw a hole through a thick plank, or shere through a double
billet in a night; it loveth also the stillest rivers, and it is given to
them by nature to go by flocks unto the woods at hand, where they gather
sticks wherewith to build their nests, wherein their bodies lie dry above
the water, although they so provide most commonly that their tails may
hang within the same. It is also reported that their said tails are a
delicate dish, and their stones of such medicinal force that (as
Vertomannus saith) four men smelling unto them each after other did bleed
at the nose through their attractive force, proceeding from a vehement
savour wherewith they are endued. There is greatest plenty of them in
Persia, chiefly about Balascham, from whence they and their dried cods are
brought into all quarters of the world, though not without some forgery by
such as provide them. And of all these here remembered, as the first sorts
are plentiful in every wood and hedgerow, so these latter, especially the
otter (for, to say the truth, we have not many beavers, but only in the
Teisie in Wales) is not wanting or to seek in many, but most, streams and
rivers of this isle; but it shall suffice in this sort to have named them,
as I do finally the martern, a beast of the chase, although for number I
worthily doubt whether that of our beavers or marterns may bethought to be
the less.

Other pernicious beasts we have not, except you repute the great plenty of
red and fallow deer whose colours are oft garled white and black, all
white or all black, and store of conies amongst the hurtful sort. Which
although that of themselves they are not offensive at all, yet th