igS CARNIVORA OF EPPING FOREST. 



NOTES ON THE CARNIVORA OF EPPING 



FOREST. 



rr^^HE following interesting article appeared in the Pall Mall 

 I Gazette of December 7th, i8gg. The author evidently 

 writes with knowledge of the forest, and some of his remarks are 

 confirmatory of our own observations : — 



" Duriii" the past twelve months the Epping Forest Badgers have been 

 developing a great deal of activity. No longer content with their earths close 

 to the keeper's lodge near the Wake Arms, where they share their homes with 

 rabbits and foxes, they have made new excavations and formed a colony at a 

 point nearly two miles nearer town, that is to say, in the old Loughton ramp 

 on a rising at the back of the Robin Hood. A favourite path goes within a 

 yard or two, and close to the openings is a fallen tree trunk on which ' talking 

 age and whispering lovers ' have long been used to rest, but the badgers 

 pay no heed to what goes on by day, and have the place all to themselves 

 at night. They have made a considerable number of new earths, so that 

 they appear to have come in force. Some naturalists hold that when the 

 stronghold gets too crowded, the tough old parents set upon their offspring 

 and drive them away. At times, too, they get weary of their house-mates, 

 the foxes, and once or twice dead cubs have been found outside the 

 earth. They do not seem to molest the rabbits, except during the breed- 

 ing season, when they esteem the young an irresistible dainty. As is well 

 known, the doe rabbit does not make her nest in the family burrow, but 

 scoops out a ' stop ' or small hole near the surface not much longer than a 

 man's arm. The badger is able to judge the position of this with great 

 accuracy, and instead of laboriously digging the nest out in all its hori- 

 zontal length, pierces it with a tiny perpendicular shaft. In spring, the 

 present writer, in company with a very accomplished naturalist, found 

 several of these harried stops in the open space below Fair Mead. 

 There was the mouth of the stop, the hole out of which the badger had 

 drawn the tiny rabbit with his paw, and lying about the ' fluck ' which 

 the mother uses for her nest. Those who know what a common resort 

 this green open space is will wonder no less that the doe should make 

 choice of it than that badgers prowl about there by night, stumbling as 

 they must over empty lemonade bottles and seeing sandwich papers lying 

 about. But there is the most certain evidence, not only of this, but that 

 on Chingford Plain— home of merry-go-round and highflier- -the Roedeer and 

 Fallow-deer, the Fox, Badger, and Rabbit roam at night. 



"The importation of badgers has been so pronounced a success that 

 attempts have been made to introduce other animals that seem to be grow- 

 ing extinct elsewhere. The most interesting of these is that beautiful 

 creature the Pine-martin. One was shot near Loughton in 1853,' and that 

 was the last killed in Essex, although as late as 1883 - a trustworthy observer 

 reported that he had seen one. At present they seem to be less nearly 

 extinct in Cumberland than elsewhere, and it having become known that a 



1 See J. E. Harting, Trans. Essex Field Club, vol. i., p. 95. — Ed. 



2 The writer evidently refers to the late Mr. English's observation of one seen in the 

 Forest, near Ambresbury Banks, on July 20th, 18S3. See Journ. of Proc, Essex F. C, vol. iv.^ 

 p. Ixiv. — Ed. 



