THE ZOOLOGIST. 



THIRD SERIES, 



Vol. XV.] AUGUST, 1891. [No. J 76. 



THE POLECAT, MU STELA PUTORIUS. 

 By the Editoe. 



Plate III. 



Owing chiefly to the increased attention paid to the pre- 

 servation of game, the Polecat, Foumart, or Fitchet, has of late 

 years suffered considerable persecution, and at the present time 

 must be regarded as one of the rarer British animals. 



Twenty or five-and-twenty years ago it was comparatively 

 common in most of the big woods in the home counties, and 

 within a very few miles of London there were several parishes 

 (to the north-west of the metropolis) wherein its haunts were 

 well known to the writer. 



In Lord Mansfield's woods at Hampstead and Highgate, at 

 the time referred to, they might often be seen hanging up with 

 other " vermin" on the keeper's gallows, and the mention of this 

 locality recalls to memory a curious incident connected with its 

 occurrence there which may be worth mentioning. It must have 

 been about the summer of 1866 or 1867 that rambling alone one 

 afternoon in Ken Wood, with a pocketful of chip-boxes for eggs, 

 insects, or shells of any land molluscs that might come to hand, 

 I stood for some minutes before the keeper's tree to examine the 

 dead bodies of his latest victims, and was particularly struck with 

 a fine large Polecat, which, having been first trapped, had then 

 been killed by a blow on the head which had partly laid bare the 

 skull. It had hung suspended so long as to have become quite 

 dessicated, and, as the skull was perfect, I was tempted to remove 



ZOOLOGIST. — AUGUST, 1891, Z 



