186 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



near the top of Derryclare, one of the mountains known as the Twelve 

 Pins, in Connemara, where I was told at the time that this was not un- 

 common, and that a few years previously two entirely white Hares had 

 been seen on Cashel Hill. — G. H. Caton Haigh (Grainsby Hall, Great 

 Grimsby). 



The Irish Stoat. — What is a barbarous name ? It is surely somewhat 

 late in the day for the Editor of 4 The Zoologist ' to protest against the use 

 of native names for animals. According to the arguments put forth against 

 Assogue, &c, in the editorial note to the description of the Irish Stoat in last 

 month's ■ Zoologist' (p. 129), we should not use " Wapiti" nor " Kudu," 

 and so on. In fact, about one half of the names in general use for animals 

 are not real original English words, but engrafted native names, adopted from 

 every language under the sun, and none the worse on that account. Indeed 

 native names are the best colloquial terms possible when properly applied, 

 and English compounds the most clumsy and unsuitable, besides being 

 generally uncertain in their application, and nearly always involving a false 

 or doubtful assumption about affinity. The mode of spelling is of course 

 a different question, on which opinions may be very naturally divided. 

 To me it seemed that Easog is too strange-looking and unpronounceable a 

 word for any Englishman to adopt, while Assogue would perhaps have a 

 chance of surviving, and we should then have the convenience of three 

 names for three species. I may add that I am personally entirely 

 responsible for the name proposed, as my colleague, Mr. Barrett-Hamilton, 

 was at the time of writing the paragraph beyond the reach of consultation. 

 Like the Editor, I should certainly not " admit that the spelling of an Irish 

 name as it is pronounced makes it English." What makes it English, as 

 in the case of Wapiti, Kudu, Antelope, and others, is its use by English 

 people in English books. — Oldfield Thomas. 



[Mr. Thomas seems to have misunderstood the drift of our remarks 

 (p. 129). Our objection was not to the use of the native name Easog, 

 which is on a par with Wapiti and Kudu as above quoted, but to assogue, 

 which is neither Irish nor English, and hence in our opinion " barbarous." 

 —Ed.] 



Polecat in Cambridgeshire. — The following is from the ' Ipswich 

 Journal ' of Feb. 23rd, 1895, and may perhaps be worth publication in 

 * The Zoologist,' if only to show that the Polecat is not yet exterminated 

 on the Cambridgeshire and Suffolk borders:— "At Isleham, in the Cam- 

 bridgeshire Fens, a Polecat was found by the lock-keeper with its feet 

 frozen to the top of the lock-gate. It had evidently stopped on the gate to 

 watch some object of prey." — G. T. Rope (Blaxhall, Wickham Market). 



Food of the Bank Vole. — When staying at Chollerton, on the North 

 Tyne, for a few days after Christmas, I noticed under a hawthorn hedge a 



