NOTES AND QUERIES. 189 



meuced, aud a large number of time-honoured specimens are being either 

 dismounted or removed from the galleries. Many of the most important 

 specimens are from the old Montagu collection, and are therefore nearly 

 loo years old. Never having been properly preserved, and having been 

 mounted with all the bones in them, these historical specimens have for 

 some time been gradually decaying, and very few of them are now fit for 

 exhibition. Tt is needless to add that, under the care of the officer in charge 

 of the ornithological department at South Kensington, every reverence will 

 be shown for these ancient and valuable relics, and an effort will now be 

 made to replace them in the exhibition rooms by a more complete series of 

 British Birds than the Museum has yet shown to the public. Especial 

 pains is being taken to illustrate the various plumages of each species, the 

 seasonal changes, &c. All this will, of course, be a work of time, and our 

 object in mentioning the fact is to ask the assistance of naturalists oil over 

 England to help in the formation of the new zoological collection. It is 

 only by the co-operation of his brother ornithologists that Mr. Bowdler 

 Sharpe can hope to succeed in his aim, which is to render the collection of 

 British Birds in the Natural History Museum the best in the land, aud 

 worthy of the nation to which it belongs. 



MAMMALIA. 



Polecat in Devonshire.— Under this heading you were good enough 

 to insert (Zool. 1883, p. 25) a note which I sent you. Since then I have 

 received information on the subject from several readers of ' The Zoologist ' 

 and others, and it may be worth while to put, on record their evidence, as 

 showing the gradual extinction of the Polecat in this county. Mr. Gatcombe 

 very kindly allowed me to search through the lists of animals stuffed by 

 the late Mr. BoHtho, a well-known birdstuffer of Plymouth, of which he 

 had become possessed. I found ten instances in which Bolitho had received 

 Polecats, or " Fitches," as he generally termed them, between 1843 and 

 1859, the last being on September 17th of the latter year. Mr. Gatcombe 

 tells me he has seen one at a birdstuffer's since BoUtha's death, which 

 occurred in 1883, and he has just informed me that one was cauaht in a 

 trap set for rabbits near Plymouth at the end of last March. He thinks it 

 a female, as it is rather small in size. It seems hardly likely that it was 

 an escaped brown Ferret, though it is somewhat light in colour, but it is 

 impossible to distinguish between the two animals. Mr. Daniel Radford 

 of Lydford Bridge, tells me that one was killed there about seven years agoj 

 and when I was at that beautiful locality in July last, I saw one nailed up 

 on the wall of the gamekeeper's dog- kennel, which had been killed in the 

 previous April. Of course I secured the head, aud it has been well 

 macerated and made into a good skull. These recent occurrences satis- 

 factorily prove that the Polecat is hardly yet extinct in the western portion 



