THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 
[No. 53. 
Vou. V.] MAY, 1881. 
THE PAST AND PRESENT DISTRIBUTION OF SOME OF 
THE RARER ANIMALS OF SCOTLAND.*« 
By J. A. Harvir-Brown, F.Z.S. 
Ill. Tue Powecat. 
THE same causes which have influenced the decrease of the 
Marten seem to have operated in the case of the Polecat. Rabbit- 
trapping has proved fatal to it; for, whilst the increase of rabbits 
has provided it with an abundant supply of food, it has been the 
indirect means (through the agency of steel-traps) of causing its 
decrease. 
Inland localities in the Highlands comparatively unstocked 
with rabbits have been gradually deserted by Polecats, which, 
drawing down towards the sandy barrens along shore where 
rabbits abounded, became an easy prey. Man, in order to rid 
himself of the “ubiquitous bunny,” for sport or profit, set to 
work to devise means for its destruction. Steel-traps came 
generally into use, and the rapid disappearance of the Polecat 
was the result. The animal still exists, however, in some 
numbers in sea-shore localities ; but careful inquiries have elicited 
the fact that this is only the case where rabbits do not abound, 
and are not systematically trapped, and where Polecats conse- 
quently are obliged to subsist on other kinds of food. It is 
amongst rugged deeply-indented shore-lines, where the area to 
be covered by vermin-trappers is greater than can be easily 
undertaken, that they are chiefly to be met with. In other words, 
these coast-lines afford the same means of replenishing the stock 
* Continued from p. 90. 
