The beautiful martins take up their abode in the rockiest parts of the wood where the pines grows thickly. They are strictly arboreal in their habits; and, seen among the shaggy pine foliage, the rich yellow of their throats is sharply set off by the deep brown of the thick glossy fur. With us they do not make their nests and produce their young in the pine-trees, but among the loose craggy rocks. Martins rarely show themselves till evening. They prey upon rabbits, hares, partridges, pheasants, and small birds; and when we say that, like the rest of the mustelidæ, they kill for the love of killing, it is not hard to understand why the keeper's hand is against them. Sometimes they do great harm in the coverts; and the old man shoots them, traps them, and does them to death with various subtle engines of his own machination. To-day the martin is rare; soon it will be extinct altogether. Weasels do much less harm. They are the smallest of our carnivorous animals, and will probably long survive. They frequently abound where least suspected, in the cultivated as well as the wildest parts of the district. They take up their abode near farmhouses, in decayed outbuildings, hay-ricks, and disused quarries; and may often be seen near old walls or running along the top of them with a mouse or bird in their mouths. These things form the staple of their food; but there is no denying that a weasel will occasionally run down the strongest hare, and that rabbits, from their habit of rushing into their burrows become an easy prey. But this does not happen often, I believe. To rats the weasel is a deadly enemy; no united number of them will attack it, and the largest singly has no chance against it. Like the polecat the weasel hunts by scent. It climbs trees easily and takes birds by stealth. The keeper has seen a brooding partridge taken in this manner, and on winter evenings the sparrows roosting in holes in a hay-rick. Weasels also kill toads and frogs; and their mode of killing these, as well as of despatching birds, is by piercing the skull.