opportunity of measuring the proportions of one. Its form is short, compact, and thick, and the colour of its coat red, hence its name. It seems to prefer the oldest covers and woods, and is supposed by many people to be the original fox of Britain, or the one from which all other kinds are descended. When leaving cover they do not gallop off boldly before the hounds, but endeavour to steal away cautiously and unperceived, generally affording the best sport, but sometimes the most protracted runs. For so small an animal, their endurance is very considerable, often knocking up the best bred hounds and horses. Wm. Hewett, Esq., of Reading (formerly of East Ilsley), says, " I was with the Craven hounds about five years ago, and viewed a small red fox away from a piece of gorse, which gave us a run of sixteen miles from point to point, without a check, threading woods of 500 acres, when at last she was run into from being caught in a wire. There were only six up at the death out of sixty or seventy at the meet, and when the second whip went into the wood for the fox, I made a remark to Mr. Villebois that the fox we found was a remarkably small one, and red, and on being brought out she proved to be the same." This animal is found in some paits of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Berkshire. — John Joseph Briggs, King's Newton, Melbourne, October 7, 1845.
Anecdote of the StoaVs preying upon Bats. It has occurred to me that the follow- ing account of, I believe, an unnoticed habit of the common stoat {Mustela erminea, Linn.) might not be unacceptable. About four years ago, on a fine afternoon in May, as I was sauntering near a brook, on the foot-road from Beeston to Nottingham, I observed a stoat descending the perpendicular trunk of a large elm, with some dark object in its mouth, as I supposed, a young bird. I did not disturb it, but watched it into a hole in the brook side. Almost immediately it reappeared, climbed the tree again, and entered a hole about twenty feet from the ground ; in a minute or two, it came out with its prize, which on my showing myself, it dropped, and ran back into the hole. Its prey proved to be the common bat {Vespertilio murium, Linn.) I climbed the tree, and saw the animal's eyes glaring in the hole, but, perhaps luckily for my hand, the hole was too small to admit it, so that I was compelled to abandon the idea of capturing the stoat, or proving what I suspect, that the place was a large roosting place for bats, of which I caught another clinging to the hedge just by, evi- dently frightened out of the tree by the stoat. The fact of these animals climbing trees to such a height, I have never seen mentioned anywhere. It also shows that the bat, so secure from molestation on the wing, or when roosting in caves or clefts of rock, falls an easy prey to these bloodsuckers, when it trusts to the security of a hollow tree. — George Wolley, 9, Cambridge-street, Liverpool, October 17, 1845.
Polecat preying on Eels. Perhaps you will not think it too late to insert a few facts which I had intended to send up to ' The Zoologist' at the time they happened, but have neglected to do so from time to time. Bewick mentions eels having been disco- vered in the nest of a polecat ; as I am not aware this has been noticed since his time, it may not be uninteresting to some of your readers to hear, that last year, our game- keeper being on Roydon fen, in this county, his attention was drawn to one of the pointers scratching vehemently at a burrow in one of the banks, he went to him, and assisted in turning out a nest, which his olfactory organs assured him was that of a polecat, in which lay a perfectly fresh eel, with his head eaten off. How he caught it is as much a problem now as when Bewick wrote, unless the eel was taking an evening walk ou the grass as they do sometimes. — H.T. Frere, Aylshain, Dec. 6, 1845.
Carnivorous propensity of the Hedgehog. I have until within the last year or two
