OCCASIONAL NOTES. 263 
impossible to suppose that the seven and a half brace introduced by 
Mr. Drax in 1853 could have sufficiently increased in numbers as to give 
Mr. Radcliffe’s hounds the opportunity of killing nearly twenty brace in 1856 
and 1857 (after an interval of barely three years)—a death-rate representing 
more than three times that number which escaped. Mr. Radcliffe’s country 
extended far beyond the purlieus of the Charborough estate, and where, 
no doubt, the descendants of the first importation had not been extirpated, 
as had been the case at Charborough. With regard to the number of 
fawns the doe produces at a birth I can speak with some authority, for 
living in the metropolis of these little cervines I have frequent opportunities 
of observation, and I can say without hesitation that the doe “produces two 
and sometimes three fawns at a time” (p. 121). Her withdrawal from the 
rest of the family and her isolation at fawning time renders it certain that 
the fawns seen by her side are her own. Three are not only frequently 
seen following her, but are found by the keepers in the same lair within 
a few moments of their birth, and too feeble to escape. Mr. Cambridge 
corrects my statement by quoting Mr. Bell, who in his first edition (1837) 
follows Pennant’s and Bingley’s opinion that two fawns are produced at a 
time; and the ‘ Gentlemen’s Recreation’ (sixth edition, 1721, p. 72), says, 
‘besides some Roe-deer have been killed with five fawns in utero.”—J. C. 
Mansr-PLEypELL (Whatcombe, Dorsetshire). 
Cause or Decrease or Roz-pEeR: Errarum.— In your next 
number kindly make a slight correction in my communication on Roe-deer, 
p. 209, line 11 from the top of page. ‘‘ The cause” should be “ one cause.” 
My illegible handwriting probably misled the printer. The cause mentioned 
is by no means the only cause of the diminishing numbers of our Roe-deer, 
though it is undoubtedly one cause, and one which a little consideration 
on the part of our sportsmen might easily prevent.—O. P. CaMBRIDGE 
(Bloxworth). ~ 
Orrers AND Bapcers In BrrxsHire.—In a shop in Reading are 
three stuffed Otters, which were killed at Sandford Mill, on the River 
Loddon, within the last nine months. The finest is a dog-otter of great 
length captured during the last long frost, and which I am assured weighed 
in the flesh twenty-nine pounds eight ounces. This fellow broke away with 
a twenty-pound trap and chain, and drowned himself. His fur is a deep hair- 
brown, very handsome. One of my friends saw at Wallingford in April last 
a pair of fresh-killed Otters, in the flesh, taken from the Thames the same 
day, a third having escaped. The Badger is still extant in Berkshire. In 
the woods at Hampstead Norris, near Newbury, a pair of female Badgers 
were recently dug out of an old chalk-pit. A young male, bagged at 
the same hole previously, is now in the possession of one of my friends— 
a somewhat uninteresting pet. He recently slipped his collar, and dug his 
