1 64 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



when the extremes are eliminated by the simple method of 

 taking the average of five consecutive prices. 



The slaughter, begun on account of the value of its pelt, 

 was continued, in part by design, because of its, thieving 

 tendencies, and in part by accident; for after the. Rabbit had 

 been introduced and encouraged by man, the Polecat found 

 in it an easy prey, and, congregating where Rabbits most 

 abounded, fell an easy victim to the steel traps of the rabbit- 

 catchers. 



How, in face of such misfortunes, does the Polecat 

 stand in Scotland to-day ? The records of its occurrences up 

 to 1 88 1 have been collected by Dr Harvie- Brown. 



In the south of Scotland it is almost if not quite extinct. 

 Its general disappearance from Berwickshire may be placed 

 about the 'sixties of last century, though one was seen near 

 Linhope in 1880; the last Roxburgh example on record 

 was caught in Liddesdale in the winter of 1879-80; in 

 Dumfries one appeared on the lands of Glenlee in 1892, 

 the only one heard of in the county for upwards of twenty- 

 five years; an example killed in Troqueer parish in 1880 

 was probably the last of the Kirkcudbrightshire race. In 

 Ayrshire, the Polecat was regarded as almost extinct in 

 1 88 1 ; in Lanark none have been heard of since about 1860; 

 and the last Renfrew example on record was killed in 1868. 



In the midlands it has fared no better. In Haddington 

 the last example recorded was shot near North Berwick 

 about 1860: in Midlothian none have been seen since "a 

 number of years prior to 1 880" (Fala Hill) ; a stray wanderer 

 to Kinneil in 1886 completed the Linlithgow tale; in Stirling 

 and Dumbarton, where they were once so plentiful that one 

 could be caught at any time, a solitary survivor was seen at 

 Garden in the winter of 1 879-80. Kinross has been deserted 

 since 1860, Fife since 1880, when one was seen at Falkland. 

 Southern Perthshire and the Loch Awe district of Argyll 

 have been forsaken since 1860, though in the wilder parts 

 of the latter county, in Sunart and Ardnamurchan, 50 were 

 killed between 1870 and 1880. 



Only a rare straggler now occurs along the east coast. 

 There have been none in Forfarshire since 1860. Except 

 for a casual wanderer such as that killed in a glen near 

 Peterhead in 1894, and notwithstanding the fact that in two 



