290 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



1881, pp. 161 — 171), that it is unnecessary to go over the ground 

 again. The result of his enquiries shows that in most of the 

 Scottish counties the Polecat has become very much scarcer of 

 late years, and that in many of them it is now extinct. He 

 attributes this decrease, in a great measure, to the employment 

 of steel or iron traps for the destruction of Rabbits, and 

 remarks that, as a rule, the Polecat only survives where 

 Rabbits do not abound and are not systematically trapped, and 

 where Polecats consequently are obliged to subsist on other 

 kinds of food. 



In the ' Scottish Naturalist' for July, 1891, Mr. Robert 

 Service has an interesting article on " The Old Fur Market of 

 Dumfries," in which he shows the proportions in which skins 

 of Hare, Rabbit, Otter, and Foumart were brought in for sale 

 between the years 1816 and 1874, and the prices which were paid 

 for them. In 1829 we find that 400 Foumarts were sold ; in 1831, 

 600; in 1840, they were still "in considerable numbers;" in 

 1854, " getting scarce ; " in 1858, " very scarce ; " in 1866, a dozen 

 only were brought in, since which time none have been forth- 

 coming. The price varied as the skins became scarcer, from 

 12s. to 36s. per furriers' dozen, which meant twelve of the best 

 full-sized skins, or a greater number of inferior ones ; and in 

 addition to skins received by the packmen (in exchange for goods) 

 in all the parishes of Dumfriesshire and the Shire and Stewartry 

 of Galloway, supplies were forwarded from other counties — Ayr, 

 Lanark, Peebles, Selkirk, Roxburgh, Cumberland, and North- 

 umberland. Foumart skins, or as they are called in the old 

 Reports, " Fitches," were mostly manufactured into ladies' boas, 

 and old wardrobes in Scotland still contain specimens. The fur 

 market fell into decay when railways were completed, and com- 

 mercial travellers, directly representing the great furriers of the 

 South, began to collect the skins at the farmhouses instead of 

 leaving the local pedlars and dealers to do so. 



In Ireland, says Thompson (Nat. Hist. Irel., Mamm. p. 8), 

 the Polecat is not positively known to exist, although said to 

 inhabit the wild woods of Kerry. He received notes of the 

 capture in several other counties of animals supposed to be of 

 this species, but their identity was not satisfactorily proved. Two 

 killed many years ago at Rosemount, Grey Abbey, Co. Down, 

 seemed, from accurate description (says Thompson), to have been 



