Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 4 (1846).djvu/79

Rh may have come to the aperture for air. This is at once distinctly proved by his dirty foot-prints afterwards in the snow. It is also an admitted fact in the natural history of the eel that it cannot exist without air. If, therefore, the water of any pond he con- gealed for any length of time, and a small aperture he made in the ice, the gi-eatest por- tion of the eels in that pond will, in a short time, assemble around that opening for the benefit of the admitted air. This interesting fact, I am informed may easily be con- firmed by introducing a small bundle of straw into the water through the aperture, as I am assured that many eels will soon imbed themselves in the straw, and if the hole be kept open for a few days, a nice dish of this delicious fish may be generally drawn out with the straw. This, I am told is no very unusual plan in taking eels from ponds in this part of the country. The polecats, then, aware, either from instinct or habit, of this propensity of the eels to assemble round any aperture in the ice for the benefit of the admitted air, invariably search for them at every opening they meet with, and in tracing their foot-prints in the snow as above described, it will frequently be discovered that eels have been dragged from under the ice by these wily fishermen, and either de- voured on the surface or carried to their dens to satisfy their hunger at some future opportunity. Bewick, to whom Mr. Frere alludes, states, if I recollect rightly, that about a dozen eels were on one occasion taken from the den of a polecat; a strong evidence of this animal's sagacity to provide against a famine. I may here also add that I have known a polecat killed by a fisherman's dog on our extensive sands nearly two miles below high-water-mark, and as herrings were taken at that very time in great numbers in nets suspended on stakes, it is very probable that this polecat had been at- tracted to near low-water-mark by the strong smell of captured herrings. Whilst on the history of the polecat, I may perhaps be permitted to remark that this animal still abounds in many districts of the North of England, though the gamekeepers use their utmost endeavours to annihilate the breed. I do not however consider the polecat so deadly an enemy to grouse, pheasants, partridges, hares, and rabbits, as either the stoat or the common weasel, and am disposed to think that when it does feel inclined to indulge in delicacies, it prefers rabbits, and most probably because it can enter their burrows and secure this prey most easily. Neither is the polecat so delicate an animal in its taste as the stoat. The latter seldom feeds on dead animals, and the blood of its victim is evidently its most delicious repast; whilst the polecat will be found frequently to act the part of a scavenger, and he contents to feed on the carcase which has been left by the stoat. The polecat will eat frogs, and even the carcases of sheep and other cattle, and as it is very inferior in activity to the stoat, and therefore less fiitted to secure delicious food, nature seems to have given it a less refined appe- tite. — J.D. Banister ; Pilling, Garstang, Lancashire, January 21st, 1846.

Carnivorous propensity of the Hedgehog. — With reference to the interesting anec- dote of the hedgehog (Zool. 1204), I think there can be little doubt of its carnivorous habits. I never, indeed, saw it attack a bird, but the address and sanguinary courage it shows in making war upon serpents, proclaim it at once a beast of prey. Neither can this be an unnatural inclination brought on by confinement, as I have more than once observed the viper to become scarce, or disappear entirely from the border of a wood, after a hedgehog had taken up his quarters amongst them. But granted that the animal is carnivorous, we have no need to think the worse of it on that account ; the services it renders to man by destroying venomous reptiles, amply counterbalance any petty depredations it may commit Indeed its remarkable exemption from the effects of so many poisons seems to me an express provision of Providence to enable it