ZOOLOGY. 



THE DESTRUCTION OP BEASTS AND BIRDS OP PREY. 



BY MR. W. J. MAXWELL, OF TERREGLES. 



Repi'inted from the Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway 

 Natural History and Atitiquarian Society (issued 1887). 



THE subject of which I am to write is not of scientific interest 

 alone, and it is not as a scientific question that I intend 

 to deal with it. I wish, rather, to draw attention to the practical or 

 utilitarian view of the question, in the hope that something may be 

 done before it is too late to check the indiscriminate destruction of the 

 native beasts and birds of prey. 



One of these predatory animals, the Fox (Cam's vulpes), I may pass 

 over. There is no fear of foxes being exterminated in the south-west 

 of Scotland, for some time to come, either by fair or foul means. 



The Badger (Meles laxus) and Polecat (Mustela fiutorius) may, I 

 suppose, be considered extinct hereabouts, although I can recollect 

 when the latter animal was quite common ; and, indeed, I remember, 

 when a boy, seeing a nest of young ones dug out of a hole in our own 

 garden. The same fate which has befallen the Polecat seems likely 

 soon to overtake tha Stoat (M*. erminea), a more useful animal, in my 

 opinion, and one deserving of more consideration than it has usually 

 met with hitherto. I look upon the Stoat as our best protector from 

 the legions of Rats, which now threaten, not only to eat us out of 

 house and home, but even to pull down the very houses in which we 

 live. The country simply swarms with rats. Every ditch and burn 

 is infested with them ; and therefore, though there is an endless 

 number of different ways of killing or of driving them away from houses, 

 all those various expedients, however ingenious, are in vain, except 

 as a means of obtaining temporary relief. As soon as one batch of 

 rats is killed off or expelled, a fresh lot is ready to take up the quarters 

 they have vacated. The only effectual check upon the Rat is the 

 Stoat, who hunts him down with deadly pertinacity in his favourite 

 haunt, the ditch or running stream. Although the Rat can swim like 

 a fish, and can thus escape from a dog or a cat, he has a poor chance 

 of saving his life when pursued by a family of stoats. As I have seen 

 myself, in the days when stoats were plentiful, they hunt the Rat as a 



