The Stoat's Winter Pelage

Abstract

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, in NATURE of February 17, p. 220, directed attention to what he considered the conditions determining the winter change of colour in stoats, and inferred that the tendency to undergo such a change is usually the inherited characteristic of some particular strain or breed, rather than the outcome of any special present local severity of climate. He said the effect was most marked in the Highlands of Scotland and diminished regularly as one travelled south, until on reaching Cornwall the winter blanching seemed almost entirely in abeyance.