It appears that the Hare under similar conditions does not exert itself greatly to escape from the Stoat, but becomes so terrorised as to be unable to adopt methods which so frequently outwit the Fox or the fleetness of trained hounds. The nursery is made in a hole in the bank, the hollow of a decayed tree, or in the retreat of a female Mole who has been killed or evicted. Here about April or May the female Stoat gives birth to four or five young, which she will defend with great fierceness against all dangers. The distribution of the Stoat extends eastward from Great Britain into Asia, and from the Alps and Pyrenees across Europe to its arctic shores. [Illustration: _Pl. 44._ _F 68._ *Weasel's Hole.* In woodland bank, containing nest and young.] [Illustration: _Pl. 45._ _F 69._ *Polecat at Bay.* Defying a human intruder.] A local race of smaller size, with some variation in the colouring, is found in Ireland, and some systematic naturalists, eager to swell our short list of native mammals, have dignified it with a separate species name--_Mustela hibernicus_. In Ireland it is known as the Weasel, but no specimens or skins of the true Weasel (_Mustela nivalis_) have ever been received from that country. Another local race in the Isle of Jura on the west coast of Scotland is similarly given species rank. *Weasel* (_Mustela nivalis_, Linn.). Although of very similar form to the Stoat, the Weasel may be known by its smaller size and by the absence of the black tip which marks the tail of the Stoat. In colour there is little difference in the two species, except that in the Weasel the upper parts are of a redder brown and the under parts a purer white than in the Stoat. The head is narrower and the legs are shorter, whilst the tail, which is a conspicuous feature of the Stoat, is here less bushy and little more than half the length of the Stoat's appendage. The average length of a mature male is nine or ten inches, to which the tail contributes only two inches; the total length of the female is an inch and a half less than that of the male.