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XIV. The Mammalia of Essex ; A Contribution towards 

 A List of the Fauna of the County. 



By Henry Layer, M.R.C.S., F.L.S. 



[Read December 17th, 1881.] 



The Rev. Richard Lubbock, in commencing his account of 

 the Fauna of Norfolk, remarks that a sketch of the Mam- 

 maha of a county " may be comprised within a narrow 

 compass — species grow gradually scarcer and scarcer. When 

 we look at the trim fences and high cultivation of great part 

 of this district (Norfolk), a wide stretch of imagination is 

 necessary to carry the mind back to days departed, when the 

 urus, the bear, and the wolf ranged the forest, or traversed 

 the marsh, pursued by hunters nearly as savage as them- 

 selves."^ Our own county of Essex was, we are sure, the 

 home of these same wild animals, the urus, the bear, and the 

 wolf, and we may also place with them the wild hog, red deer, 

 and roebuck, as creatures which have been the unfortimate 

 victims of that rigorous cultivation mentioned above, which 

 is found to be necessary to the sustenance and happiness of 

 the higher creature, man. Cultivation and enclosure have 

 been carried in Essex to greater completion than in most 

 parts of England, and with the exception of Epping Forest 

 there is no extensive tract of woodland in the county. Our 

 wild and predaceous animals have in consequence been 

 diminished or exterminated, earlier than in more favoured 

 spots, where forests, mountains, and marsh have protected 

 them and delayed that extinction which is inevitable before 

 many years have expired. 



It is, I think, a good idea to take stock, if I may be allowed 

 the expression, of our diminishing fauna before the dying out 

 of any more of our wild animals occurs ; and in another 



1 [' Observations on the Fauna of Norfolk, and more particularly on the 

 District of the Broads.' By the late Eev. Richard Lubbock, M.A., Rector 

 of Eccles. Norwich, 1845. New Edition, 1879.— Ed.J 



