392 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Here was Abdul Ben Ibrim with a Moorish porcupine from Mogador, and 

 a few minutes later Juan de Valdos, who, in broken Spanish, offered a choice 

 cobra for sale. A Cape captain would announce that he had a lion consigned 

 to him from Port Elizabeth, or a whaling skipper from Dundee might inquire 

 what market there was for a first-class Polar bear. Almost any living thing, 

 from a tortoise to eat slugs in the garden, to an elephant to form the central 

 attraction in a show, might either be had or heard of here. These were the 

 palmy days of " the Highway," when the business was so large that the 

 losses by death alone amounted to two or three thousand pounds a year. 

 Latterly, the wild beast merchant had fallen on duller times. The demand 

 for his wares had lessened, and the prices they fetched were poor compared 

 with a period when showmen were more numerous and public taste less 

 sophisticated. The canary trade is no longer in British hands; the Germans 

 have cut into it. Monkeys are not so saleable as they were, snakes have 

 ceased to be profitable, and voyages are too short for sailors to be able to 

 teach parrots the marketable amount of highly spiced language. A hippo- 

 potamus or a giraffe has become too common to be costly, when Thibetan 

 bears began to be knocked down at seven pounds apiece, huge elephants at 

 two hundred, hyaenas at four pounds eight, vampires at thirty shillings, 

 and boa-constrictors at sixty shillings, Mr. Jamrach must have felt that 

 his occupation was gone. — ' The Standard.' 



MAMMALIA. 



The Polecat in Cambridgeshire. — In your article on the Polecat 

 (p. 281) no mention is made of its occurrence in Cambridgeshire. Is the 

 animal now extinct there ? In the churchwardens' accounts from Easter, 

 1781, to Easter, 1782, of my late Cambridgeshire parish, Dry Drayton, the 

 following item occurs : " Dec. 22nd, paid for two Polecats, 8d." Again, in 

 the churchwardens' account for 1776, among other particulars, the following 

 item occurs : " Oct. 23rd, paid for one Polecat, 7d." There are also records 

 of disbursements for Hedgehogs, Moles, and Sparrows ; especially the 

 last, dozens and dozens of them, chiefly between 1770 and 1790. During 

 my incumbency (1873 — 1880) payment was still made to the village school- 

 master for Sparrows, and to Wilmot, the Mole-catcher, for Moles; but 

 I conclude this was done at the cost of the farmers, as nothing was heard 

 of it at our periodical vestry meetings. While rector of Dry Drayton I 

 never recollect hearing of the Polecat there, but will write, if you wish, to 

 one of my late parishioners, and ask if the animal still occurs there, or has 

 been noted within living memory. — F. A. Walker (Cricklewood). 



The Polecat in Merionethshire. — In the autumn of 1878 a friend, 

 who had been staying at Bala, told me that he had heard from a keeper 

 near there that the Polecat was not at all uncommon in that neighbourhood, 

 and that the keeper was to get him a specimen. A short time afterwards 



