The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 119 
no rambler, gifted with the sense of smell, could possibly 
omit the fitchet, foumart, or polecat (Mustela putorius), one 
of our finest furred animals, which we have reason to judge 
must be abundant in these woods, although indeed a species 
of fungus is found in them, which might, from its alarming 
smell, be apt to mislead to the belief that a polecat was near.” 
The qualification with which the author closes -his remarks 
will, it is to be feared, render the rest of his statement practi- 
cally worthless in the eyes of most naturalists. 
Mr Sam Martin, for many years keeper at Hopetoun, 
writes me that the last was killed there fully thirty years ago. 
Mr Durham of Boghead, near Bathgate (son of the late 
Mr Durham Weir, MacGillivray’s able correspondent), has 
recently shown me two stuffed specimens which were cap- 
tured there about forty-five years ago, and he further assured 
me that one was seen at a farm close by so recently as 1884. 
But this is not the latest record, for Mr W. H. Henderson, 
Linlithgow, writing to Mr Eagle Clarke in November 1890, 
states that at Kinneil, on the western confines.of the county, 
on the 15th of November 1886 one ran out of a covert into a 
whinny mound. Mr Henderson had not seen or heard of one 
before in the county during a residence of thirty-five years. 
In the east of Stirlingshire Mr Harvie-Brown is of opinion it 
cannot have been common even sixty to sixty-five years ago. 
About 1860 several are said to have been seen on Gallowmuir 
by an old mole-catcher, and Mr James Stirling of Garden 
heard of one near there in the winter of 1879-80. 
For Perthshire there are many records during the last forty 
years, but very few of them fall within the scope of this 
paper. At Leny, near Callander, one was trapped in 1855, 
and another in 1858, while on Lord Moray’s estate above 
Doune one was caught about 1850. In Kinross one was seen 
at Turfhills about 1845, and another on Scotlandwell Moss 
about 1860. With regard to Fife, I have often heard my 
father relate his experiences when a lad in connection with 
the trapping of Polecats in a poultry-yard near Dysart ; this 
would be between 1830 and 1835. According to Mr Harvie- 
Brown’s information, none have been seen at Lathirsk since 
about 1860, and at Lawhill one was obtained in 1866. In 
