VERTEBRATE ANIMALS OF LEICESTERSHIRE. 163 
Class Mammatia.— Order Carnivora. 
Family Fevmw2. 
Felis catus, Linn. Wild Cat.— Extinct within historic times. 
No authentic records are extant relative to the occurrence in this 
county of the Wild Cat, which without doubt disappeared from 
the ancient forests and fastnesses about the same time as the 
Wolf and Wild Boar. Potter, Babington, and Harley, writing 
from forty to fifty years ago, are all silent on the subject; and the 
Rev. A. Matthews, who has been resident twenty-five years in the 
county, writes word that he has never heard of any occurrence of 
the Wild Cat in Leicestershire. Large specimens of the Domestic 
Cat, which have taken to a wild life, have been often shot as game- 
destroyers in the various woods of the county, and have been 
forwarded to the Museum as the true Felis catus. But for this 
fact, and in order to correct a misleading reference to the Wild 
Cat in the pages of the ‘Midland Naturalist’ for November, 1884, 
I should not perhaps have referred to the species. 
Family Canripm. 
Canis lupus, Linn. Wolf. — Extinct within historic times. 
In Potter’s ‘History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest’ (1842) 
he writes—‘ Charnwood formed part of the ancient Celtic Forest 
of Arden, which extended from the Avon to the Trent, and the 
Leicestershire portion was bounded on the east by a line running 
through High Cross to Barton, in Nottinghamshire. . . . . Previous 
to the time of Edgar, the district was greatly infested with wolves.” 
Selden, in his notes to Drayton’s ‘ Polyolbion’ (ix. 76), refers to 
the Manor of Piddlesey, in Leicestershire, which was held by one 
Henry of Angage per serjeantiam capiendi lupos, and quotes as his 
authority ‘ Hist. Leicesters. 27 Hen. III. in Archiv. Turr. Lond.’* 
Canis vulpes, Linn. Common Fox. — In such a fox-hunting 
county as Leicestershire it is needless to say that the Fox is 
generally distributed and common; resident and breeding. Mr. 
H. 8. Davenport writes on February 4th, 1855—“ We occasionally 
draw coverts blank, and find foxes up great trees.” Mrs. Shackel- 
ford, of Husband’s Bosworth, Rugby, writes as follows :—“ In 
September, 1881, a friend and I were shooting over a large field 
of turnips in the parish of Saddington, accompanied by two 
beaters, a marker on horseback, and a spaniel dog. On our first 
* Harting, ‘Extinct British Animals,’ p. 142. 
