last it got a little way ahead, and took refuge in some thick brushwood. Expecting that its fate was now sealed, I ran down, and in so doing alarmed the stoat, which made off into a drain. To give the rabbit a chance for its life, I started it also, and it cantered away in an opposite direction. On telling the story to a farmer there, he said that these hunts were not unusual on that bank, but they were far more comical when the stoat was in his white winter dress. The rabbits were almost always run down, and he had trained his sheep-dogs to attack the stoat; at which they were soon so expert as very rarely to miss being the rabbit's avenger.

The weasel, only half the size of the stoat, is more than a match for either a full-grown rabbit or rat. I was amused by an account of one of these combats, related to me by a friend who had just witnessed it, while riding along the public road, near Wargrave, in Berkshire. A weasel had attacked a large Norway rat, which seemed to think discretion the better part of valour. As he was retreating, he always wheeled about, raising himself on his hind legs when attacked in rear. As soon as the weasel heard the sound of the horses' feet, he hid behind a wall, but the poor rat was so completely done up as to suffer himself to be seized by the tail. The English peasantry assert that there are two kinds of weasel, one very small, called "a cane," or "the mouse-killer." This idea, I have no doubt, is erroneous, and the "mousekillers" are only the young ones of the year; numbers of these half-grown weasels appearing in summer and autumn.

THERE are many conjectures as to the cause of pure white or pied pheasants suddenly appearing in a preserve, which had only been stocked with the common coloured birds. The most reasonable solution seems to be that white blood, although remote, might appear after several generations. I have been led to think so, from seeing a whole brood of pheasants turn out milk-white, when the parents were both of the ordinary kind. More often, however, there are only one or two white birds of the same hatch. At Rossdhu, one white hen was observed the second season after pheasants were turned out. It was unfortunately caught in a vermin-trap in the autumn. Several years elapsed before any more were seen, when one cock and two hens appeared among the other pheasants collected on the stubbles at the beginning of winter. These were most probably hatched in the same nide. Since then several more have been noticed at different periods. Pied pheasants have never been seen there, although in many places they are less uncommon than the white. I killed one, very prettily marked, in Roxburghshire, which I put up several times before getting a shot at it. The tail and wing-pinions were pure white; head, neck, and back spotted with white feathers, and legs the colour of a white fowl's. The spurs were exceedingly long and sharp, which, together with its size and brilliancy of plumage, showed it must have been very old.

As there are many preserves where neither pied nor white pheasants have ever been heard of, I am strongly of opinion that a sprinkling of white pheasants have ori

ginally been imported, which may have partially extended their ramifications. Most sportsmen will have observed something of the same kind when rabbit-shooting; a black fellow suddenly starting up amidst multitudes of the common grey. I recollect once seeing, in the middle of a populous rabbit-warren, four very young black ones, the only sable inhabitants of the colony. I have often watched them from a tree, and noted that they always kept close together, and frequented the same hole. No doubt they were of the same litter.

Quite distinct from the above is the Albino, several examples of which variety I inserted in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of January 15, 1849. I select the two following, as being particularly curious. "A cream-coloured hart is now roaming Lord Breadalbane's celebrated forest, the Black Mount. But perhaps the most interesting of these 'lusus' is a beautiful roe of the purest white, which haunts the tangled copses of Craig-an-James, on the banks of Loch Lomond. This fairy-like creature, so harmonising with the romantic district it frequents, was first observed last spring, when a fawn, by the keepers of Sir James Colquhoun of that Ilk, on whose property it is. Its eyes are red, and, what is very remarkable, it does not vary its colour according to the season. This is the more unaccountable, as the roe always changes the chestnut red of summer for the dark mouse-colour of winter. This winter dress prevents the animal from being readily seen, when the coverts are thin and bare and the trees stript of their leaves, and is one among the thousand provisions for these

creatures, so defenceless and so often assailed, by the Hand that formed them all. The instinct, however, of the species leads our white-robed dryad to suppose herself, when squatted, as safe as her sober-coated companions, though her colour at once betrays her. The Alpine hare, on the contrary, not being an exception, but a distinct race, seems fully aware of its conspicuous winter appearance, and, when the snow is off the ground, always seeks to hide among the light grey rocks or thick patches of heather."

I am sorry to say that this curiosity was unable to bear the only few days of severe weather the following winter. It was found in a dying state among the snow, which it almost rivalled in purity. My brother has had it stuffed.

The summer before last, another red-deer calf appeared in the Black Mount, as white as a sheep. This yearling can be made out on the hill at a mile's distance, among heather or rocks.

There is a pure white rook in the Edinburgh Zoological Gardens, taken out of a nest at Dalkeith. The brood contained several black ones besides, one of which was brought away for company and by way of contrast to the albino. The ivory and ebony were both in fine polish the last time I saw them.

In all creatures that put on their white winter dress, there is a dark spot, left as hostage for their again appearing in summer hue; but albinos have always the same unvarying sickly white.

THE hooded or Royston crow of England must either be different in its habits from that of Scotland, or naturalists of the south are much mistaken in their observations on this bird. Bewick and others make a marked difference between the Royston and carrion crows, saying that the "former arrive with the woodcock, and take their departure in spring to breed." Now, in Scotland, there appear to me nearly as many hooded as carrion crows all summer, and both are called by the common people "Hoody Craws." Nests are constantly found with one of both kinds; and I have noticed that the male is generally hooded, and the female black. The young also are mixed. Bewick says that, in more northern parts, the Royston crow remains the whole year, subsisting on sea-worms, shell-fish, &c. Now I have remarked that the black crow is nearly as often to be met with on the sea-shore as the Royston, and is equally fond of shell-fish. Those hooded crows on the sea-shore are much lighter in the colour, and more apt to live in pairs than the inland ones, which I don't recollect ever seeing build together. I have, however, often found nests where both male and female were black. The food of Inland Royston and black carrion crows is alike; their habits are the same; they are also found always in company when the young leave the nest. A gamekeeper, of some experience in trapping vermin, informs me that two Roystons and two black may be hatched in the same nest; also, that sometimes the male is hooded, and sometimes the female.