MAMMALS. 



19 



1894-5 and 1903-4, I find no entries whatever of Martens, and on a 

 separate slip containing notices of rarities, neither is any mention 

 made of the animal ; and these notes contain, His Grace assures me, 

 all the rarities which have come under his personal knowledge for 

 the past forty years, during which time he came into the manage- 

 ment of the Atholl estates. The significance of such omissions is 

 not always quite clear, as I have already indicated, but there may 

 also be a possibility that the much greater extent of barren mountain- 

 lands in the great afforested portions of Atholl may not yield quite 

 so abundant amenities for the species as the richer and lower-lying 

 grounds. Still, it is curious to note the complete absence of even a 

 single instance. 



In the east of our area, i.e. in Strathmore and the Forfar and 

 Kincardineshire hills, etc., I had no returns whatever from the most 

 easterly outspurs of the Grampians when I wrote the monographic 

 paper already alluded to ante, but since then I have received evidence 

 of one trapped at Fasque between 1864 and 1867, by an old keeper, 

 from Mr. J. Milne. At that time they were considered rare, and none 

 had been observed on that estate for forty years previously — say 1827. 



Even as long ago as the date of the Old Acts of Scotland occurs 

 the passage which may serve to show the estimation in which the 

 pelt of the Marten was then held : "It is ordainit that na man have 

 Mertrick skinnes furth of the realms ; and gif he does that, he pay 

 the King xis. for the custume of the skin : and for x foumartes 

 skinnes callit fithouris xd. " (James i., 1424, c. 24, ed. 1566). 



Weasels and Stoats. 



Taking all the country over — I mean all Scotland — the Stoat is the more 

 abundant as well as the more generally distributed species of the two. The Stoat 

 is certainly the more abundant on high and rocky ground, and is much oftener to be 

 found even to the tops of our highest mountains than its smaller relative. Of course 

 one simple reason is that there is far more of this mountainous country than of 

 the lower and agricultural lands, and in places in the latter the Weasel, or " Mouse- 

 Weasel," may perhaps be slightly the commoner. 



In many, indeed in most, of the returns of vermin placed at my disposal for the 

 purposes of this fauna, Weasels and Stoats are " lumped " together, and I indicate 

 their numbers over a territory which embraces the whole of the vast extent of the 

 Breadalbane Perthshire estates and the adjoining lands of Atholl. 



Both are entered under one column in the returns from Breadalbane, and these 

 reach the enormous total of 9862 in the ten years between 1891 and 1901. The 

 largest number was obtained in 1897, viz. 1075 ; then came 1016 in 1898, and 

 998 in 1896. 



