cuap. vil.] Zhe Polecat Chloroformed. 123 
tle out, undid the cork, and thrust the ounce of chloroform 
down the fumart’s throat. It acted as a sleeping draught: 
he gradually lessened his struggles. Then I laid him down 
upon a stone, and, pressing the iron heel of my boot upon 
‘his neck, I dislocated his spine, and he struggled no more. 
I was quite exhausted when the struggle was over. The 
- fight must have lasted nearly two hours. It was the most 
terrible encounter that I ever had with an animal of his 
class. My hands were very much bitten and scratched, 
and they long continued inflamed and sore. But the 
prey I had captured was well worth the struggle. He wasa 
large and powerful animal—a male; and I desired to have 
him as a match for a female which I had captured some 
time before. He was all the more valuable, as I succeeded 
in taking him without the slightest injury to his skin.”* 
The birds that roam at night are more easily described. 
Although the bat comes out pretty early in the evenings, 
it is not on night insects that he chiefly feeds: it is rather 
on the day insects which have not yet gone home to their 
rest. The bat flies mostly at twilight, and inhabits ruins 
and buildings as well as hollow trees in the woods. 
* An encounter between an eagle anda polecat in the forest of Glen 
Avon, Banffshire, is thus described in the ‘New Statistical Account 
of Scotland :” ‘The eagle builds its aerie in some inaccessible rock, 
and continues from year to year to hatch its young in the same spot. 
One of these noble birds was killed some years ago which measured 
upward of six feet from tip to tip of the wings. One of the keepers 
of the forest being one day reclining on the side of a hill, observed 
an eagle hovering about for his prey, and, darting suddenly down, it 
caught hold of a polecat, with which it rose up, and flew away in the 
direct of an immense cliff on the opposite hill. It had not proceed 
ed far when he observed it abating its course, and descending in a 
spiral direction until it reached the ground. He was led by curiosity 
to proceed toward the spot, which was about a mile distant from him, 
and there he found the eagle quite dead, with his talons transfixed in 
the polecat. The polecat was also dead, with its teeth fixed in the ea- 
gle’s gullet.” 
