must have suffered agonies, showing what horrible cruelty the practice of muzzling is. M—— took his ferret home, fed it well, and inside of a month it was entirely restored, and just as good a ferret, in every respect, as ever. If ferrets are together, and are kept strictly without food for a length of time, they will devour one another quite readily, in lieu of better fodder.

VIII.—BREEDING AND TRAINING.

Ferrets are rather difficult animals to raise in numbers—it requires a large amount of patience, great care, and scrupulous neatness, although when full grown they are very hardy. The writer's ferret breeding grounds consist of special farms, on which are erected numbers of small barn-like structures, each furnished inside with a dozen pens, and an aisle running through the middle. Every pen is as large as a horse's stall, the boarding and other accessories are kept clean by vigorous scrubbing, the sawdust on the floor is changed once a day, and the pens and the ferrets are otherwise attended by experienced ferret men. Here the ferrets are taught to do their work of killing and hunting by practical experiment on live rats. Although it is in the nature of ferrets to hunt and kill rats, the same as it is for a bird to fly, yet we find a little extra course of training is necessary in both cases.

It will not do to hunt with ferrets until they are at least seven months old. Ferrets breed but once a year, and have from four to nine at a litter on the average—it is very rarely they have two litters a year. They are trained to the whistle by feeding them every time this instrument is used, so that after awhile they promptly respond. The ferret is ruled through his stomach. The time of the ferret's getting in heat is in March, nine weeks after which they breed. The male invariably takes hold of the female as if he were going to strangle her. The young are born without hair, and must, therefore, be kept warm. They have their eyes open in thirty days, and should be fed on as much milk as they want.[A] The male should be removed from the female before the littering, the symptoms of which are exactly like a cat or a dog, or else he will destroy the entire brood. Care should be taken to have the female well supplied with food during the period of copulation, or else she may casually munch up the young herself, and the writer has lost many a pretty litter by this little habit of the unnatural mother. As in crops, there are years for raising ferrets which are more fortunate than others, some seasons having a fatal effect on the young ones.

IX.—STRENGTH AND BITE.

The great strength of the ferret is in the teeth, neck, and forefeet. One ferret can hold up eight times its own weight with its teeth. Twenty or thirty ferrets when hungry will fasten their teeth in a piece of meat and can be picked up in this way and swung around without ever causing them to think of letting go. They will hang to an object which they have been provoked against with a persistence which would make a Bill Sykes bull-dog blush with shame. The only way to loosen their hold is to grasp them firmly around the neck with the pressure on the skull, and to shove them towards the object, not from it, for if you try the latter way you can pull for a day and a night without any perceptible result on the ferret.

The bite of a ferret is not dangerous; they will only bite a human being out of mistake, because they don't see well in the daytime. They imagine you are kindly holding down some bit of meat for them to chew at, and they don't bite because they are at all viciously inclined towards you. Of course you don't want to tease, annoy, or step on them, or you may find them loaded. If a ferret bites you, he will let go immediately, and you and the ferret both will quickly realize the mistake.

X.—HANDLING.

Ferrets should at first be handled by the back of the neck. The tail is the natural handle for lifting up a ferret, in the same degree that the ears are of a rabbit. The ferret should only be lifted by the tail and should be handled by the back of the neck. After a wild ferret has been handled this way for some time he will get to be very tame and you can handle him in any way. He will get so that he will hop up in his pen at your approach and want you to play with and caress him, although it is never advisable to give him your perfect confidence, such as putting him to your face, etc.

XI.—WITH CATS AND DOGS.

Ferrets are easily kept with cats and dogs, and after a little training and discipline they will hunt together, the ferret being generally used to drive out the rats from the holes in a barn, etc., and the dog doing the killing. When they are first introduced to each other there will be a little sparring, and the dog's master must strictly forbid his dog to touch the ferret or else the dog may kill it at the first wrestle, but after the novelty of each other's appearance has worn off they will lie down together in one corner and be the best of friends, as I have witnessed scores of times. The writer has cats and ferrets on his farm that regularly feed and play together. Ferrets should not be kept in a place with sick dogs or cats, as the disease will surely be transmitted to them.

XII.—THE FERRET'S ADVANTAGES AS A RAT EXTERMINATOR.

Ferrets have been brought forward, chiefly by the labors of the present writer, to be regarded within the last few years as domestic animals. There is certainly, yet, a great degree of prejudice against the ferret—a natural result of ignorance of its ways; but we firmly believe that the more it comes in contact with man, and is bred in captivity, the more readily it will be put by him in the division of common domestic animals, and he will, furthermore, find it his best remedy in rat extermination, making the latter worthies as scarce as the ordinary rat has made its black-complexioned cousin.

For this latter purpose the ferret's most apparent advantages are as follows:

• First. There is nothing a rat is more afraid of, by nature, than a ferret, so that the rats are driven off by acute bodily fear.
• Second. The body of the ferret, and its small head also, is remarkably flexible, thus enabling it to get into and drive out the vermin from their holes and breeding-places.
• Third. When through hunting they do not stray off, but return to their pens, and wait there till they are put in.
• Fourth. They devour the entire carcass of the rat, after killing it, and do not leave the slightest trace of it around.
• Fifth. The ferrets can be trained to obey the whistle somewhat like a dog, and, by attaching a bell to their necks, they can always be traced to whatever part of the building they may stray.
• Sixth. After they get acquainted, and have been handled for some time, they become affectionate pets, and can be fondled and caressed freely.
• Seventh. They are very cleanly, peaceful, and nondestructive in other ways.

XIII.—MISCELLANEOUS.

Ferrets are extensively used to drive out rabbits from their holes, although the laws are very stringent against