The long, slender body, short limbs, long neck and small head give it a snake-like appearance which is helped by its active, gliding movements. The snake-likeness is accentuated when only the foreparts are seen protruding from a hole. On one occasion as we passed a stack of cord-wood on the edge of a wood, our attention was attracted by a hissing noise. On the level of our face a snake-like head peered out from between the cord-wood; and many persons would, no doubt, assume that a snake had threatened them. But the snarling expression exposed the canine teeth. The cause of the demonstration was not obvious, but we presumed that there were young Weasels in the stack, and that some other predatory animal had threatened danger to them just before we passed, and had aroused the maternal rage. In spite of its small size the bloodthirsty Weasel is full of courage, and will attack creatures larger than itself. We have seen it, in the neighbourhood of a barn, struggling to haul along a nearly full-grown Rat, two or three times its own weight, after it had paralysed its victim by biting through the base of the skull. Sometimes it hunts in couples, or family packs. Although, like the other members of its family, the Weasel is chiefly nocturnal in habit, it is also active by day, and may be encountered frequently in our rambles. His diet is varied, and includes rats, mice, voles, moles, frogs, small birds, and chickens. He will swim in pursuit of the Water Vole, and will climb trees and bushes in order to rob a bird's nest of eggs or young. Voles and mice are probably his principal victims, his small size enabling him to pursue them in their underground runs. But though the farmer may lose some of his chickens through want of care in protecting fowl-houses and runs, he has in the Weasel a most efficient guardian of his mangold-caves and other consumable stores. Many farmers have testified that their poultry is untouched by the Weasel, but destroyed by the Stoat.