Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

If you look at the cape as worn by Queen Elizabeth I 400 years ago, you can clearly see the black tails of the 200-odd stoats that went into its making. The stoats had changed their coats for the winter and become ermine, of course.

Only pure white ermine skins were required for this expensive luxury and show of power. Parti-coloured stoats, like many of those found in Sussex in winters gone by, were of no use. So the ermine had to be trapped over northern Europe and Scandinavia.

Many were supplied from as far away as America and Asia if the climate was cold enough.

Experiments were made by one of the Rothschild family, always interested as they were in the scientific side of nature, to see whether stoats kept in captivity in sub-zero conditions could be induced to turn white in England. They did only partly so during the pelage change in autumn.

For full story see West Sussex Gazette November 12 2008