282 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



it for the purpose of cleansing and preserving it. Hardly had 

 I commenced operations with my pocket-knife when I was struck 

 by the extraordinary number of spiders which issued from the 

 interstices of the dried skin and made off in all directions. 

 Wondering to what species they might belong, I proceeded to 

 catch and box as many as I could before they disappeared, and 

 the same evening I despatched them by post for identification to 

 my friend Mr. 0. Pickard- Cambridge, in Dorsetshire, begging 

 him to tell me something about them. I was soon afterwards 

 agreeably surprised to hear from him that I had forwarded 

 specimens of an apparently undescribed species of Linyphia, but 

 that, as I had sent only females and young males, the fact could 

 not be positively asserted until some adult males could be 

 examined. These I tried in vain to procure by returning to the 

 keeper's tree and searching around it. But the Polecat, for want 

 of the head by which it had been suspended, having fallen to the 

 ground and been kicked aside, was no longer to be found, and my 

 knowledge of spiders being too rudimentary to enable me to 

 recognise for certain the species of which I was in search, I could 

 only catch what spiders I could see in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood, in the hope that amongst them there might be what was 

 wanted. But this did not prove to be the case, and I thus lost 

 the chance of being announced as the discoverer of a new species. 

 But this by the way — a trifling incident a propos of a former 

 haunt of the Polecat in Middlesex. Other localities noticed in 

 those days as sheltering Polecats were Hendon, Edgewarebury, 

 Stanmore, Harrow, the well-springs at Willesden, and Kingsbury, 

 where I once helped to unearth a family-party of six— namely, 

 two old ones and four full-grown young ones — from a cavity in a 

 grotto made of large loose flints and covered with ferns and 

 stonecrops, within sight of our windows. I had discovered their 

 lair by observing their footprints round the cairn after rain, and 

 lifting off the flints one by one, and as noiselessly as possible, we 

 at length discovered them curled up like Ferrets. The mysterious 

 disappearance of numerous ducklings and chickens from our 

 poultry] yard, which had been for some time noticed, was now 

 more than hinted at; but, strange to say, there were very few 

 rejectamenta in the cairn. The conclusion, I think, at which we 

 arrived was, that the Polecats were too clever to bring their prey 

 home with them to such an exposed spot, and must have therefore 



