NOTES ON CORNISH MAMMALS. 413 
In a big patch of dense oak-scrub between Millook and Dizzard 
Head, Foxes and Badgers live side by side, the latter in astonish- 
ing numbers. The association is on the whole an amicable 
one, but occasionally there is violent nocturnal commotion in 
the colony. The Pine Marten (Mustela martes, L.) was un- 
doubtedly common in the eighteenth century, but rapidly 
diminished in number towards its close, chiefly, in Couch’s 
opinion, because the numerous pollard trees that were permitted 
in olden times to grow about the homesteads for the sake of fuel 
were cut down as coal came into use among the farmers, and so 
the safe and congenial shelter afforded by the hollow trunks for 
these and other members of the Weasel family was destroyed. 
In ‘ The Zoologist’ for 1878 (p. 127) HE. H. Rodd mentions the 
occurrence of a Pine Marten in the Glynn Valley, near Bodmin, 
about the year 1848, and records the capture of a full-grown 
specimen in the neighbourhood of Delabole quarries in March, 
1878. Somewhere about 1885 it seems another example was 
killed in the Hast Looe Valley, a few miles from Liskeard. The 
animal was stuffed by John Ough of that town, and was seen at 
the time by several local naturalists who are still living. Un- 
fortunately John Ough’s private memorandum book has been 
mislaid, and may have been destroyed, and up to the present 
there is no information as to the Marten’s captor, or as to the 
destination of the stuffed specimen. This last reported occur- 
rence of the Pine Marten in Cornwall was brought to the writer’s 
notice by J.C. Tregarthen. There is an example in the Museum 
of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, but its history is not 
known. 
The Polecat (Putorius putorius, L.) is now very scarce, but 
can hardly be called rare, as it still breeds sparingly in the 
rough, wild cliff-land of the north coast, and occasionally at 
least on the south. Though the majority of reputed Polecats 
killed in the county are domestic cats run wild, the writer has 
during the past nine years seen six genuine Cornish examples of 
the species—three from between Tintagel and Widemouth Bay, 
one from near Launceston, one from Chacewater, and one from 
the Land’s End district. In addition to these, Tellam has 
reported one from Bodmin, H. Harris of Knighton’s Kieve two 
from between Bossiney and Boscastle, and Sandercock one from 
