'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. They may be seen engaged in this occupation,
during which they show little or no fear of man. They will stop when
crossing a ride to pick up the scent of the hunted rabbit, and after
following it into the next square, run back to have another look at the
man they noticed as they went by, with an impudence peculiar to their
race. The foxes have selected one of the prettiest tracts of the wood for
their breeding-earth. It is dug in a gentle hollow, and at a height of
some forty feet above the Thames. From it the cubs have beaten a regular
path to the riverside, where they amuse themselves by catching frogs and
young water-voles. The parent foxes do not, as a rule, kill much game in
the wood itself, except when the cubs are young. They leave it early in
the evening and prowl round the outsides, over the hill, and round the
Celtic camp above, and beat the river-bank for a great distance up and
down stream, catching water-hens and rats. At sunrise they return to the
wood, and, as a rule, go to earth. The cubs, on the other hand, never
leave it until disturbed by the hounds cub-hunting in September. Otters,
which travel up and down the river, and occasionally lie in the osier-bed
which joins the wood, complete the list of predatory quadrupeds which
haunt it. With the exception of the first, the wild cat, and the last, the
otter, they constitute its normal population, and as long as the stock of
rabbits and hares is maintained, they may remain there as long as the wood
lasts.