This incident leads me to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit. On one occasion, as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass, a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur apparently curled with perspiration, uttering a kind of suppressed cry, and evidently in a state of the greatest terror. I pulled up in order to discover the cause of this alarm. The rabbit re-entered the cover a few yards further on; but presently, where it had emerged, I saw a weasel; and then I became aware that a number of these creatures were working through the grass. I watched their movements, following them at a distance, till they had about reached the spot where the rabbit re-entered. Then, feeling a keen sympathy for the poor persecuted rabbit, I charged into the midst of the pack, and by dint of plunging up and down among the startled company, and striking at them with my whip, I succeeded in dispersing them. At the same moment the rabbit, which had no doubt been crouching near, half paralysed with fear, darted out, and passing by me, went away at a great pace, as if rejoicing in the rescue. I pursued the weasels for some distance, and should say there was not less than a dozen. I was much astonished at the enormous leaps which they made in their flight, their long, lithe bodies contracting, and then expanding with a sudden jerk which threw them forward several feet at a time. As to the habit of weasels hunting in a pack, Waterton, the naturalist, mentions that he has seen two old stoats with five half-grown young ones hunting together. {69} Richard Jefferies, in his book, “Round about a Great Estate,” mentions having seen a pack of five stoats hunting in company, and says that a poacher told him that he had seen as many as fourteen so engaged. In the above case, which came under my own observation, the weasels were all apparently full grown and equally agile. CHAPTER VI. REPTILES, FISHES, INSECTS.