"Stoat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have a certain increase of covering as they recede further from the warm climates to the cold ones. Wolves and foxes, hares and rabbits, change the colour of their skins to white when they get far north. The little English stoat, which is destroyed by the gamekeepers, becomes the beautiful snow-white ermine in Russia ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and cloves, the nutmegs and the civet, the ambergris and frankincense. There was a fight before Raleigh's ship the 'Roebuck' could seize this enormous prize, yet somewhat a passive one on the part of the lumbering carrack, such a fight as may ensue between a great rabbit and the little stoat that sucks its life out. When she was entered, it was found that pilferings had gone on already at every port at which she had called; and the English sailors had done their share before Burrough could arrive on board; the jewels and the lighter spices ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and gave chase to Tom. The ploughman left his horses at the headland, and one jumped over the fence, and pulled the other into the ditch, plough and all; but he ran on, and gave chase to Tom. The keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a trap, let the stoat go, and caught his own finger; but he jumped up, and ran after Tom; and considering what he said, and how he looked, I should have been sorry for Tom if he had caught him. Sir John looked out of his study window (for he was an early ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... wren was perched on the topmost twig of a thorn-bush, chattering and scolding furiously. Now, there is no bird which gives prompter warning of an intruder than the wren. Whether the intruder be two-legged, man or boy, or four-legged, stoat, weasel, or pole-cat, the plucky little wren always gives the enemy a piece of ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... to a class of animals which we may call the Weasel tribe. Their bodies are long and lithe, and their legs short. This family includes the weasel (its smallest member), the stoat, the ferret, the pole-cat, the marten, and the otter (its largest member). You may then think of the Otter as a water-ferret, or water-weasel. He can swim most elegantly, and he is a beautiful diver. Let a fish glide underneath him, and he is after it in a moment; ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... shelter of some bushes. Then I saw that it was of a clear white, while so-called white ferrets are usually a dingy yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black. From these circumstances, and from the timidity and anxious desire to escape observation, I could only conclude that it was a white stoat. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... wastin' time; but if you'll take my advice, Mr Nanjivell, and it isn' too late, you'll marry a woman. She'll probably increase your comfort, and—I don't care who she is— she'll work out another woman that writes 'nonymous. Like a stoat in a burrow she will, specially if she happens to take in washin' same as my lost Sarah did. She was shown a 'nonymous letter with 'Only charitable to warn' in it. Dang me, if she didn' go straight an' turn up a complaint about 'One chemise torn in wash,' an' showed me how, though sloped ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Broom-Squire caressingly, "we won't quarrel about words. I didn't mean what you have put on me. I want you to come and be my wife. It isn't only that I've had a quarrel with my sister. There's more than that. There is something like a stoat at my heart, biting there, and I have no rest till you ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... rabbits and throve. Now ferrets and phosphorus are exterminating it in the rabbit-infested districts. Moreover, just as Vortigern had reason to regret that he had called in the Saxon to drive out the Picts and Scots, so the New Zealanders have already found the stoat and weasel but dubious blessings. They have been a veritable Hengist and Horsa to more than one poultry farmer and owner of lambs. In addition they do their full share of the evil work of bird extermination, wherein they have active allies in the rats and wild cats. On the whole, however, though ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves |
