346 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



eyes. 33rd day. Snap's right eye perfectly open, the left increasing all day, 

 almost perfectly open by night. 35th day. Snap's eyes both perfectly open. 

 38th day. Snap measured 13 in. 39th day. Cubs out, drinking milk, &c. 

 42nd day. Snap's four inner incisor teeth in the upper jaw were in place, 

 those in the lower jaw just showing through the gums. 43rd day. One pair of 

 the lower incisors (reckoned from one side, Nos. 2 and 5) well down. 44th 

 day. That pair of the lower incisors further down ; the central pair (Nos. 3 

 and 4) cut. The outer upper pair (Nos. 1 and 6) just beginning to show 

 where they will come. 49th day. The outer pair of upper incisors level 

 with the others. All six lower incisors well down. The molar teeth are 

 not so easily observed, but I do not know why I did not note the canines. 

 50th day. Snap measured fully 15 in. I was absent from home from the 

 51st to 66th day, when I found him almost full-grown. Polecats probably 

 begin to eat rather before they are three weeks old. It was a very easy job 

 to rear the cub which I rescued on the 31st day. He very soon despised 

 milk, and for some time before I left him on the 51st day, hardly drank a 

 couple of teaspoonsful of milk in a day. However, when adult, they take 

 to it again, and are very glad to get it. This hand-reared cub — now in his 

 second year — remains tame, though, as was to be expected, his name has 

 proved very appropriate ; his keeper has vowed several times that Snap had 

 had the last taste of him he ever should. However, with all his faults, 

 Snap is a most engaging little " varmint," and we let him loose whenever 

 the keeper or I can keep an eye on him, but cannot trust him long out of 

 sight, or he would soon be lost. The popular belief that the number of 

 young in a litter could be told by the number of teats in use in the mother 

 is a fallacy, at any rate so far as Polecats are concerned. One of my tame- 

 bred Polecats effected his escape, by an accident that could hardly have been 

 foreseen, one night last April. I had seen him all safe after 11 p.m., and, 

 though he had never been out of a cage in his life, he went through a 

 portion of the town, crossed the Thames, presumably by the bridge, and 

 kept down the road until he came to Bisham Abbey, where he must have 

 turned off across "the Warren." As, however, there are no rabbits there, 

 he went on until he reached the hen-house, a distance of about a mile and 

 a half. There he was killed the following afternoon by the bailiff, assisted 

 by a crowbar and a dog, after making, I understand, a game fight for his 

 life, and having killed one or more hens, the evidence, however, not 

 being very dependable. The usual length of males is from 20 to 24 in., 

 females a good deal less. Males appear to preponderate over females at 

 about the rate of two to one. The young are born probably, as a rule, 

 early in June. Entries of payments for killing " Poulcatts," " pole Cats," 

 &c, are very numerous in the churchwardens' accounts in this county 

 (as is doubtless the case in every other county), chiefly during the 18th 

 century. Probably a thorough search through these records would enable 

 one to form a very tolerable idea of the former distribution of this animal 



