NOTES AND QUERIES. 183 



Otters and Polecats in Suffolk. — According to reports published 

 from time to time in the local papers, great destruction seems to have been 

 wrought of late amoug the Otters in Suffolk. No less than eight have 

 been killed during the past winter in the Stour alone — several about 

 Beccles, one was destroyed last January near Blaxhall, and the death of 

 another at Walberswick was reported only a few days back; while in all 

 probability other instances have occurred which have not found their way 

 into the newspapers. The slow-running muddy Suffolk rivers seem to 

 have some special attraction for Otters, possibly from the great abundance 

 of eels ; and of late years these animals have, for some reason, been more 

 frequently met with than was the case some twenty or thirty years back. 

 This is hardly what circumstances would lead one to expect, as many of 

 their old strongholds are gone. The venerable pollard-ash trees, hollow 

 with age, which supplied our forefathers with firewood, are year by year 

 disappearing. Ancient alders, too, under whose big spreading boles were 

 admirable retreats for Otters, are gradually dying out without successors, 

 the few trees planted singly for many years back by the river-side, and 

 about the low meadows, being in most places either poplars or willows. 

 Otters would no doubt be fairly common in Suffolk if protected ; but, 

 instead of this, they are, as a rule, shot or trapped, if possible, wherever 

 they make their appearance. In the ' Ipswich Journal ' of March 28th of 

 the present year, a Polecat is reported to have been caught at Mildenhall, 

 in a trap set for an Otter. The account given of its capture is as follows : — 

 " On Saturday night Mr. David Jude (caretaker of the Town Hall) set a 

 trap to catch an Otter which had been making depredations among the fishes 

 in the vicinity of Warmil Staunch, and on Monday morning he discovered a 

 Polecat in the trap, an animal rarely seen in this neighbourhood. The animal 

 is evidently a young one, and it has been handed over to Mr. C. A. Jessup, 

 an amateur taxidermist of this town, to be stuffed." The Polecat is now a 

 much rarer animal in Suffolk than the Otter, though it existed in some 

 of the larger woods not very many years back, and within the memory of 

 persons still living. About twenty-three years ago my brother obtained 

 from a keeper the skin of a freshly-killed Polecat. This specimen was also 

 from Mildenhall, and I do not think the capture of one of these animals in 

 that neighbourhood was at the time thought to be anythiug very remarkable. 

 As far as I am aware, the Polecat has been completely exterminated 

 throughout the eastern part of the county, and in the west it is probably 

 very nearly extinct. — G. T. Rope (Blaxhall, Suffolk). 



Seasonal Change of Colour in the Stoat.— I have no doubt that the 

 change in colour from brown to white and vice versa, during the autumn 

 and spring, is effected much the same as is the plumage of many birds 

 "minus moulting", but such change does not take place with all, as the 

 finest Stoat I have ever caught was in the full brown of the summer, 



