188 THE POLECAT. 



freshly killed polecats, destroyed by the shepherds, 

 nailed to a barn door at Gate-Up Gill, Grimwith ; 

 and I recall an exciting chase after another of these 

 creatures in that secluded moorland district. It 

 hissed and chattered at us as it bounded from 

 cover to cover amidst a fusillade of stones and 

 sticks, and going up to the place later, we found a 

 filthy brown secretion left on the rocks over which 

 the terrified creature had run ! 



On this moor, as on others, the destruction of 

 the polecat was so vigorously pursued that since 

 about 1905 it has no longer figured among the 

 moorland keeper's foes, and it is probable that in 

 less wild regions its extermination was considered 

 complete long before that date. Even in the 

 wilds of Scotland it no longer holds a place in 

 the list of living 'vermin,' while in the Lowlands 

 it is practically extinct. In England occasional 

 specimens occur from time to time, particularly in 

 Hampshire, Cumberland, and Durham ; but so rare 

 is the foumart that, even when one is in intimate 

 touch with things of the fields and the woods, 

 news of its passing is seldom gleaned. 



FOOD. 



In addition to the articles of diet already re- 

 ferred to, the polecat feeds on snakes, lizards, frogs, 

 fish, and eggs. In moorland districts lizards and 

 mice are probably its staple summer diet ; in winter 

 it feeds largely on birds that roost on the ground 

 larks, redwings, and game-birds. 



There seems to be, at any rate, a foundation of 

 truth for the old belief that the polecat feeds 

 largely on frogs. It has been said that a nesting 

 polecat bites a frog through the head so as to 

 paralyse but not kill it, and in this unhappy plight 



