Of British quadrupeds--perhaps of all existing quadrupeds--the pluckiest, and, according to its size and weight, by far the strongest, is the common weasel (Mustela vulgaris). The other day a man in our neighbourhood brought us a common brown hare, large and in excellent condition, that had been hunted and killed by a weasel in a very extraordinary manner. In the evening the man was going up a green glade on the wooded hill-side in search of his cows, when he heard what he took to be the screaming of a child on the other side of a small hazel copse which he was passing at the moment. Supposing it to be a child searching for cows like himself, that had fallen and hurt itself, or that had perhaps been attacked by some stirk or quey, angry at being disturbed in a favourite bit of grazing ground, he ran forward, and hearing the screaming repeated, was astonished to find that it proceeded from a hare that toilsomely and with staggering steps was struggling up the steep. On closer inspection, about which there was no difficulty, for by this time the poor hare was, in race-course phrase, about "pumped out," and could barely stagger along, he was more than astonished to observe that a weasel was extended couchant along the hare's back, with his muzzle deeply sunk into the vertebræ of his victim's neck, a position from which no exertion on the hare's part could possibly dislodge him. Picking up a stone, the man rushed forward and threw it with all his might, not so much at the hare as at its lithe and blood-thirsty rider. The hare, however, was hit, and fell, and with a gasp or two was dead; less from the blow than from the terrible injuries inflicted by the weasel's teeth, from which, under any circumstances, it was impossible that the poor animal could have recovered. Before the man and a dog which accompanied him could get at the wary weasel, it had with proverbial agility made good its escape. On examining the hare, we found that it was in truth dreadfully wounded, the ruthless Mustela having manifestly gone to work in a very scientific manner, the little red-eyed wretch's motto being "Thorough!" Once fairly on the back of his victim, he anchored himself firmly by his teeth right in the centre of the nape of the neck, just where the head is articulated to the cervical vertebræ; and as no exertion of the hare could shake him off, he leisurely dug down, drinking the blood and eating as he dug, until the poor hare, faint and exhausted, could only stagger about in response to each cruel dig of the dental spurs of its terrible rider. That a creature so diminutive--weighing only about as many ounces as a hare weighs pounds--should be able thus to mount and master an animal so much bigger than itself, seems extraordinary, and is only to be accounted for by a lithe agility in the assailant, to be met with in no other creature perhaps, coupled with indomitable courage and instinctive blood-thirstiness. We recollect some years ago that an old man, a James Cameron, belonging to Achintore, near Fort-William, was savagely assaulted by a colony of weasels, and very severely wounded before he could get rid of his assailants. He was employed by a neighbour to remove a cairn of small stones from a grass field, in which it had long been an eyesore, from the centre of which cairn, when he had wheeled away several barrows-full, six or seven weasels rushed out and attacked him. So sudden and unexpected was the attack, that before he could do anything to defend himself, his hands and chin and cheeks--for they instinctively flew at his throat, which was luckily guarded by the thick folds of a homespun cravat--were severely bitten. One or two he killed by taking them in his hands, dashing them to the ground, and trampling them under his feet; but the others stuck to him with the pertinacity and viciousness of angry bees, and it was only by running into a house that was at hand, for aid and protection, that they ceased their attack and left him. Happening to be in Fort-William that day, we recollect examining the man's wounds, and getting the story of the weasel assault from his own lips. We remember remarking how astonishingly deep and formidable were the wounds, to be made by the comparatively small teeth, short though sharp, of the weasel; and what was worse, they festered again and again, and gave the man much pain and trouble ere they fully healed up and disappeared. An old gamekeeper tells us that he once saw a fallow deer fawn, upwards of six weeks old, killed by a weasel in one of the Callart parks precisely as this hare was killed, and a fawn at that age will weigh three times as much as a brown hare in ordinary condition.