414 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Penryn, all of which may be accepted without hesitation. The 
Stoat (P. ermineus, L.) is common and generally distributed. 
White and pied examples are occasionally met with, but indi- 
viduals in true winter pelage are rare. One beautiful specimen, 
white all over except for a triangular speckled patch of brown 
and white between the ears and nose and the customary black 
tip to the tail, was caught at Killiow, near Truro, during the 
blizzard of 1891. Another with the brown colour somewhat 
more pronounced on the head was taken between Mawgan and 
St. Columb in February, 1907. Canon Thynne examined a 
similar specimen that had been trapped near Kilkhampton in the 
early spring of 1895. Pied and white Stoats are well repre- 
sented in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 
Truro. The Weasel (P. nivalis, L.) is widely distributed, and on 
the whole fairly common. Pied and white examples are more 
rarely met with than in the case of the Stoat, but the Truro 
Museum collection contains several, none, however, of recent 
date. The Badger (Meles meles, L.) is remarkably common 
locally in the woodlands, on the broken cliff-land, and among old 
mine-shafts and deserted workings, and it is so generally distri- 
buted that there are few, if any, parishes in the county in which 
it is not resident. It is abundant in the Land’s End district, 
where, as J. C. Tregarthen says in a letter to the writer, there is 
hardly a croft it does not traverse in its beats, or in which it has 
not an earth. It is very common around Camborne, Redruth, 
and St. Agnes, in the Fourburrow county, and in suitable locali- 
ties throughout the Truro-Falmouth district. It is obviously 
plentiful, too, around Bodmin, St. Austell, Liskeard, Looe, and 
Launceston, but the maximum density of population is reached in 
sundry large patches of scrub on the irregular cliff-face of the 
north coast between Tintagel and Widemouth Bay. 
The Otter (Lutra lutra, L.) is plentiful and generously dis- 
tributed throughout the streams of the county. It is of frequent 
occurrence in the open sea and in caves along the south coast, 
and occasionally ventures into the estuaries of the Looe River, 
the Fowey, and the Fal. On the north coast it is rarely seen in 
the open or even in the estuaries, though its traffic is usually 
conspicuous along the banks, not only of the larger streams but 
also of many of the insignificant brooks that empty into the 
