6 NOTES ON SOME OF OUR BRITISH MAMMALS. 
surrounded Burton, and to the large tracts of park land 
left as nearly as possible in a state of nature, which still 
remain, our district is fairly rich in mammals, and I have 
found evidence of the existence of 36 out of the 46 terres- 
trial mammals which are usually considered British. For 
information respecting such as I have not personally observed 
in Staffordshire and Derbyshire I am indebted mainly to 
Sir Oswald Mosley’s “Natural History of Tutbury,” and 
especially to the notes on the ‘‘ Mammalian Fauna of Burton” 
by Mr. Edwin Brown; and for historical details chiefly 
relating to Chartley. and Needwood, to Plot’s ‘“ Natural 
History,” and Shaw’s ‘History of Staffordshire.” The 
list of mammals in John Horatio Dickenson’s ‘Sketch of 
the Zoology of Staffordshire” included in Shaw’s ‘ History,” 
published in 1798, is the earliest catalogue of beasts found 
in our neighbourhood which I have yet seen. Dickenson’s 
list shews 22 species then living in the district and known 
to the author, but neither the Wild Cat nor the Pine-Marten 
are included, though Garner mentions Needwood Forest as 
a shelter for the Pine-Marten at a much later date, and I 
find that it continued not uncommon in some parts of 
Derbyshire as recently as 1841. Mr. J. E. Harting’s 
«“ Extinct British Animals” also contains much interesting 
matter relative to the extinct members of our local mam- 
malian fauna. 
Chiroptera. At the head of the list of British Bats stand 
those remarkable creatures the Leaf-nosed Bats, so called 
from the presence on the muzzle of a number of leaf-like 
processes of skin around the nostrils. Of the two British 
forms, the larger, known as the Greater Horse-shoe Bat 
(Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum), is more particularly a southern 
form, being most plentiful in the South and West of England, 
scarce in the Midlands, and not occurring at all in the 
North or in Scotland. It has not yet been recorded for 
Burton, but might possibly be found as a straggler from 
