308 =Barry: Changes among Animals in Fylingdales. 
The Polecat used to appear on the gamekeeper’s lists of 
this estate; but I never succeeded in seeing one until 1903, 
when (at the end of January or the beginning of February) my 
gardener caught a fine adult male in a trap set for rabbits, 
inside a burrow in the oak woods about three furlongs from 
the house. Its leg was broken, but it was kept for about 
three months in the ferret hutch of the garden. During this 
period it became slightly tamer, allowing itself to be touched 
when at rest, but it was uncertain. At last, owing to its un- 
bearable stench and the large amount of raw meat which it 
required, it was destroyed. After its capture, the tracks of 
another Polecat were seen round the gardener’s cottage, so that 
it would seem that they had been hunting in couples. 
A few years ago, someone wrote to ‘The Field’ to say that, 
when traversing Fylingdales Moor by the Whitby and Scar- 
borough Road, he had seen five Polecats together somewhere in 
the neighbourhood of Jugger Howes. There is no more likely 
place for their headquarters than the Jugger Howes gill. I 
think that the captured Polecat already mentioned must have 
come down from the moor under stress of weather, tracks in 
the snow having been seen some time before in High Moor 
plantation. 
The Squirrel was quite unknown on this estate and in this 
dale until about twelve years ago, when it suddenly appeared 
and multiplied so rapidly that, on seeing the damage which it 
was beginning to do to the young larch and spruce, and know- 
ing what it had done elsewhere, as in Scotland, I reluctantly 
declared war upon it. 
I do not doubt that it came from the Sneaton plantations 
across the moors. That is the nearest point at which it was 
found before, and then, as in the Newton House Woods below 
them, it had been abundant for a long time. One of the first 
that I saw was in the high part of the Ramsdale Woods, and the 
distance between that point and the nearest point of the Snea- 
ton plantations is only about one mile and a quarter. With so 
short an interspace it may seem strange that the Squirrels 
should never have come before, but then it must be remembered 
that all of this is open moor, and that, no doubt, was the natural 
barrier which proved so efficient for such a number of years. 
It may also be asked why the Squirrel should have come when 
they did. I can only conjecture that the heavy falls of timber 
which have been going on in the Newton House Woods for the 
last thirty years, and the destruction in the early eighties (I 
Naturalist, 
