118 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
qualifying remarks, in the volumes of the “Old Statistical 
Account” is excellent evidence that it was a common animal 
in many localities, if not indeed in all, up to the closing years 
of last century. For thirty or forty years more it was still 
well known, but its numbers had been terribly thinned in the 
interval, and by about 1850 it had practically ceased to exist 
within our limits, so that the subsequent appearance of an 
example here and there has always been regarded as an 
exceptional event, and very likely some of these have merely 
been escaped Ferrets. Even the memory of it is fast dying 
out, and comparatively few of the keepers I have questioned 
can give me any information regarding it. Neill, in his 
Newhall list (1808), and again in his Tweeddale list (1815), 
includes the “Polecat or fitchet” without remark, but 
neither Stark (1834) nor Rhind (1836) mention it among the 
animals to be found in the immediate neighbourhood of 
Edinburgh; while MacGillivray, writing in 1838, speaks of it 
as “ of rare occurrence in the more cultivated tracts.” Game- 
keepers who have known some of the largest estates in 
Midlothian and East Lothian for more than half a century, 
are nearly unanimous in fixing the date of their last Foumart 
somewhere between 1840 and 1850. According to Dr 
Crombie, one was shot about a mile from North Berwick about 
1860, and the only Midlothian Polecats Mr CharlesgCook has 
a note of are one obtained on the farm of Fala Hill, and one 
seen at Crosswood Hill, both a number of years prior"to 1880. 
At Edmonstone, near Liberton, one, which was afterwards 
trapped by the keepers, was seen by Mr James Haldane about 
thirty-five years ago (vide Mr Harvie-Brown’s article on 
the Polecat in the Zoologist for 1881, p. 161). In Linlithgow- 
shire nine were killed at Lochcote between 1838 and 
1845 by the keeper, David Kerr, whose son I have recently 
interrogated on the subject. In 1847 Kerr also killed two 
at Champfleurie in the same county; and Professor Duns 
tells me that shortly after he went to Torphichen, in 1844, 
he noticed Polecats nailed to a keeper’s wall. In Fyfe’s 
“Summer Life on Land and Water at South Queensferry” 
(1851), the following passage occurs at page 148 :—“ Amongst 
the fere nature of Barnbougle, or rather of Dalmeny Park, 
