Being mainly a night-hunting animal it escapes notice. But in
the quiet of the wood it lays aside its caution, and hunts boldly in the
daytime. The cries of a young pheasant in distress, running through some
thick bramble patches and clumps of hazel, suggested that some carnivorous
animal was near, and on stepping into the thicket a large polecat was seen
galloping through the brushwood. Its great size showed that it was a male,
and the colour of its fur was to all appearance not the rich brown common
to the polecat and the polecat cross in the ferret, but a glossy black.
This, according to Mr. W.E. de Winton, perhaps the best authority on the
British _mustelidae_, is the normal tint of the male polecat's fur in
summer. "By the 1st of June," he writes, "the fur is entirely changed in
both sexes. The female, or 'Jill,' changes her entire coat directly she
has young; at the end of April or the beginning of May. The male, or
'Hob,' changes his more leisurely throughout the month of May. He is then
known locally as the black ferret, and has a beautiful purplish black
coat. As in all _mustelidae_ the male is half as big again as the
female." Stoats and weasels are of course attracted to the woods, where,
abandoning their habit of methodical hedgerow hunting, they range at
large, killing the rabbits in the open wood, and hunting them through the
different squares into which the ground is divided with as much
perseverance as a hound.
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