I'HE POLECAT, 293 



when touched. They have little or no smell, unless irritated, 

 when, like the Weasel and Stoat, they can emit a very strong 

 odour. They are easily kept in health if fed on bread and milk, 

 with a good supply of rats, mice, small birds, and frogs. 



Mr. Cowley, who has two live Polecats at the present time, 

 tells me that a freshly killed dead cat is a great delicacy to them, 

 as it is to Ferrets, particularly when they get low in condition, 

 and pulls them up sooner than anything. If allowed to get too 

 low, he says, they get foot-rot, even though kept scrupulously 

 clean, and this disease is not always confined to the feet, but 

 appears like a fungoid growth on the ears, tail, and other parts of 

 the body. If taken in time, however, it may be readily cured by 

 a dressing of oil of tar, after paring away the excrescences. 



Mr. Cowley writes : — 



" The two Polecats I now have are both males and live together. They 

 have both bred with Ferrets, which I believe are only domesticated 

 Polecats, the white ones being albinos and sports of nature. They improve 

 the breed of ordinary Ferrets by making them stronger in constitution, and 

 by making them work quicker and longer than ordinary Ferrets, which get 

 lazy and slow after they are two years old. They want more handling and 

 more work when growing than ordinary Ferrets do, or they get shy of being 

 picked up. The second cross is perhaps the best for general purposes, 

 although the first cross are capital rat- workers round stacks where agility 

 is wanted. I have seen a half-bred Polecat swim across a stream where a 

 rat had just crossed, a thing I never saw an ordinary Ferret do. 



" One thing I never could make out, and this is a point which might 

 interest readers of ' The Zoologist,' namely, what does a wild Stoat or 

 Polecat do when badly bitten by rats ? All ratcatchers know to their cost 

 how many Ferrets die from being badly bitten in the head. It festers and 

 swells, and in a few days often proves fatal. I very seldom lose one now, 

 however, for I find that carbolic oil brushed over the wound soon heals it. 

 But what can a wild animal do ? It must get bitten sometimes, though 

 I must say I never saw a Stoat or Weasel with any bad scars. Have they 

 any means of curing themselves by rubbing against any plant, or how 

 do you account for their immunity? They often kill full-grown rats, 

 we know." 



Their greater activity probably enables them to avoid attack. 



Bellamy states in his ' Natural History of South Devon ' 

 (p. 194) that a white variety of the Polecat, taken at Marley, 

 South Devon, was in the possession of Mr. G. Leach, but this 

 may have been an escaped Ferret. I never saw or heard of a 



