From Fox's Earth 



animal just keeps a hold. A sinuous form is 

 occasionally seen to cross from covert to covert ; 

 the remains of the feast tell of the depredator. 



At a pace midway between that of the wild 

 cat and the marten, is the polecat going to ex- 

 tinction. Some say there is defective observation 

 here : it is really the marten that is going faster. 

 A question of much the same purely speculative 

 nature as which of two rabbits the cook put first 

 into the pot. Any interest it has will pass when 

 the hindmost follows. Such records as have been 

 sent to me seem to bear out that the polecat has 

 a slight advantage in the pace. 



From the Central Highlands, from Argyllshire, 

 and the west it vanished about the same time as 

 the marten. In Sutherland and the north-west 

 the only district left for comparison it is the rarer. 

 Where the other lingers it is unknown. " There 

 are no polecats in my district and neighbourhood. 

 I have not seen one for ten years. There are 

 still a few martens." So writes, from Scourie, an 

 old gamekeeper who knows more about the wild 

 creatures there than any man living. In the more 

 inaccessible parts of Durness, it is hard to get 

 beyond rumour. Ewen Campbell talks of the 

 marten as a form of the past : no word whatever 

 of the polecat. 



Unlike the marten, and like the wild cat, there 

 is a tame foumart, in so far as any creature can 

 be called tame that has ever in it something 



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