NOTES AND QUERIES. 2H5 



with Foxhounds in Carmarthenshire, and already referred to by me. — 

 E. Cambridge Phillips (Brecon, S. Wales). 



White and Pied Stoats. — I have seen albino Stoats, but never a true 

 white one. Piebald Stoats are, however, not very uncommon. Years ago 

 my brother had a remarkably large piebald buck Stoat that was killed in a 

 rat-trap in our house, in the Co. Dublin. About the same time a smaller 

 one was caught in a trap set in a rabbit-run. I shot a piebald Stoat at 

 Portraine, Co. Dublin, and I saw a very white one chasing a rabbit in 

 Coole Park, Co. Galway. Others that I have seen were in the Burreu, 

 Co. Clare, and in the crags of Galway, Mayo, &c. In general, when you 

 see anything of the kind you have not got a gun, and anyone who has tried 

 to catch a Stoat in an old wall knows what a task he has. Years ago, near 

 the N.E. end of Lough Graney, Co. Clare, there was a farmer who used 

 regularly to feed the Stoats, as he said if he gave them their meal of milk 

 they never went near the hen-roosts. Besides, he said that they kept 

 strangers away, and that the bucks used to get as " white as snow in the 

 winter." This latter assertion, however, I will not vouch for, as I have 

 often heard of a hare " as white as snow " that did not answer my 

 expectations when I shot it. In my boyish days a Stoat-skin purse, or, as 

 they were nearly universally called in Ireland, "a Weasel-skin " purse, was 

 considered lucky, while a piebald Weasel-skin purse was the height of 

 luck. I had, and perhaps have still, a piebald Marten-skin, the Marten 

 having been killed in the wood, near Castle Kirke, Lough Corrib. — G. H. 

 Kinahan, in ' Land and Water.' 



CETACEA. 



Delphinus tursio in the Colne.— On the morning of May 29th last, 

 a man named John Crosby was walking by the side of Mill Creek, 

 Fingringhoe, when he discovered some large Porpoises in a shallow part of 

 the creek, unable to pass downwards, in consequence of the receding tide 

 leaving too little water on a bank below. With the help of some of his 

 friends, whom he had called to his assistance, a slip-noose of rope was passed 

 over each, and they were drawn on to the marsh, and dispatched by cutting 

 their throats, pig-fashion. I saw them in the afternoon, and found them 

 to be two male and one female " Bottle-noses," Delphinus tursio, a Dolphin 

 not rare in our estuaries. The female measured 10 ft. 3 in., the largest 

 male 10 ft. 1 in., and the lesser 5 ft. 10 in., from the tip of the nose to the 

 notch in fluke, respectively. — Henry Laver (Colchester). 



BIRDS. 



Variety of Grus cinerea in Spain. — About the end of April last I 

 heard from Seville that the Comte de Paris had shot a white Crane in the 

 Marishills below Seville ; and as my informant had not seen the bird, and 



