DESTRUCTION FOR SKINS AND OIL 161 



odd examples were killed in Ayrshire in 1876 (Maybole) 

 and in 1878-9 (Minnoch Water). From the midlands too 

 it has gone. It was "rare" in Stirlingshire at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, and the last wanderer to Dumbartonshire 

 was killed at Arrochar in 1882, the last to the kingdom of 

 Fife near Dunfermline in 1873. It has been driven even 

 from the wilds of southern Perthshire, which ceased to be 

 an important breeding ground about the 'fifties and 'sixties 

 of last century, although odd stragglers were seen up to 1880, 

 when one was killed at Balquhidder. 



The east coast also has been deserted. The last recorded 

 example in Forfarshire was slain about 1860. In Aberdeen- 

 shire the Marten has been driven to the wilds of Strathdee 

 and Strathdon, for although a straggler was found at Gourdas 

 in Fyvie in 1894, the last individual on the coast was killed 

 at Ellon in 1874. The southern border of the Moray Firth 

 was abandoned many years previous to the appearance of 

 a pair of wanderers near Burghead about 1868. 



In the more northern counties the Marten still retains 

 a hold, but in reduced numbers which find sanctuary in the 

 protected wilds of the deer forests. The last remnant of a 

 once universally distributed and flourishing race has been 

 pressed backwards and ever backwards by the persecution 

 of mankind, till it now finds itself concentrated in the forests 

 and moors of the central Highlands, in Sutherland, Ross 

 and Inverness and perhaps in Aberdeen, Perth and Argyll. 

 From the wilder breeding centres of these districts the 

 Marten still ranges occasionally into new territory (an in- 

 dividual appeared at Colintraive on the Kyles of Bute in 

 1914), but such wanderers invariably meet a fate unworthy 

 of their venturesomeness, and the Marten, first pursued for 

 its skin and later for its transgressions, has already trodden 

 far upon the path to extinction. 



THE POLECAT OR FOUMART 



The history of the Polecat (Mustela putorius] (Fig. 39, 

 p. 163) or Foumart (this Old English and Scottish equiva- 

 lent meaning Foul Marten, from the atrocious smell of the 

 creature) runs parallel with that of the Marten. Once an 

 abundant and universally distributed denizen of Scottish 



