th among all the lesser wood-folk;
the scent of his passing brings an almost helpless paralysis. And yet in
some way he must be handicapped, for his slightly larger cousin, the mink,
finds good hunting the year round, clad in a suit of rich brown; while the
weasel, at the approach of winter, sheds his summer dress of chocolate hue
and dons a pure white fur, a change which would seem to put the poor mice
and rabbits at a hopeless disadvantage. Nevertheless the ermine, as he is
now called (although wrongly so), seems just able to hold his own, with
all his evil slinking motions and bloodthirsty desires; for foxes, owls,
and hawks take, in their turn, heavy toll. Nature is ever a repetition of
the "House that Jack built";--this is the owl that ate the weasel that
killed the mouse, and so on.

The little tail-tips of milady's ermine coat are black; and herein lies an
interesting fact in the coloration of the weasel and one that, perhaps,
gives a clue to some other hitherto inexplicable spots and markings on the
fur, feathers, skin, and scales of wild creatures. Whatever the season,
and whatever the colour of the weasel's coat,--brown or white,--the tip of
the tail remains always black. This would seem, at first thought, a very
bad thing for the little animal. Knowing so little of fear, he never tucks
his tail between his legs, and, when shooting across an open expanse of
snow, the black tip ever trailing after him would seem to mark him out for
destruction by every observing hawk or fox.

But the very opposite is the case as Mr. Witmer Stone so well relates. "If
you place a weasel in its winter white on new-fallen snow, in such a
position that it casts no shadow, you will find that the black tip of the
tail catches your eye and holds it in spite of yourself, so that at a
little distance it is very difficult to follow the outline of the rest of
the animal. Cover the tip of the tail with snow and you can see the rest
of the weasel itself much more clearly; but as long as the black point is
in sight, you see that, and that only.

"If a hawk or owl, or any other of the larger hunters of the woodland,
were to give chase to a weasel and endeavour to pounce upon it, it would
in all probability be the black tip of the tail it would see and strike
at, while the weasel, darting ahead, would escape. It may, morever, serve
as a guide, enabling the young weasels to follow their parents more
readily through grass and brambles.

"One w