* * REGAINING LOST BIRDS.
That most English of institutions, the Field, is celebrating its eightieth birthday and using the occasion to compare the country life of early Victorian days with ours. It is pleasing and not a little surprising that the naturalists, especially Mr.
Coward (whose knowledge is like that of " the Master of Balliol College'') hold the present to be rather richer than the past. We have gained more birds than we have lost within the last eighty years. The tale of the mammals is rather less satisfactory ; but the strangest example of the re-emergence of an almost extinct species is clean omitted. Within one county at any rate, Merioneth, the. polecat is now a quite common animal, at least as common as the stoat in most other places. Its depredations began to be an obvious threat three years ago. Last year, as was duly reported in this place at the time, as many as twenty-nine were killed on one small estate, and this year seven or eight were killed in one day, incidentally in the course of a raid on the rabbits. I heard it called in the neighbourhood (where an attempt was being made to secure some live specimens for the Zoo) "the red polecat," as if there were other varieties ; and, like stoats, they vary a good deal in colouring. I am told but cannot verify the belief, that there are signs that the pine marten, always the rarer of the two, is increasing a little in Scotland. * * *
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