I02 
The Scottish Naturalist. 
appeared, but many men — alas ! they are old boys now ! — yet tell 
how in their youthful days they hunted the polecats for the sake 
of the skins, which brought them so much welcome pocket money 
at Fair times. I believed at the time I furnished Mr. J. A. 
Harvie-Brown with some information about foumarts in this dis- 
trict for his articles on the Rarer Animals of Scotland (see 
Zoologist, 1881, " Polecats," pp. 165, 166). that they were then 
quite extinct. Within the last few years this opinion has been 
slightly modified by hearing of stray polecats here and there 
throughout the Stewartry. It w411 be seen that the tabulated 
statistics I have given above bring down the records of polecats 
in this district a few years later than is given in Mr. Harvie- 
Brown's paper. 
Ottei's. — These animals are still tolerably numerous throughout 
our streams, and there is a steady local demand for their skins. 
Many a young gamekeeper makes his first advance to his 
sweetheart by offering the fair one an otter skin to make a 
muff! 
Various Skins. — The only miscellaneous skins mentioned as 
sold at the fur markets in Dumfries are badgers, foxes, and cats. 
It is almost certain the latter were all the domestic animal. Fox 
skins were always an illicit article in Dumfries-shire ; those offered 
always came, or at all events were said to come, from Galloway, 
where foxes still are, as they have always been, vermin, and where 
even the county gentlemen pay a reward for their destruction ! 
Badger skins were never a large item in the fur market — the 
Dumfries folks set too high a value on the live animal to deprive 
it of its skin. Dumfries badgers were at one lime in great 
demand by our southern neighbours, and were reckoned the 
gamest in the kingdom. They were all, however, procured on the 
Galloway side of the Nith. In the Stewartry it is believed the 
badger still maintains a precarious existence, but in Dumfries-shire 
it is doubtful if there is one left, although one was killed at Dals- 
winton, near Dumfries, so lately as April 12th, 1887. 
