146 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



conversation with him he told me that cats were some years ago much 

 more numerous than at present — that, in fact, they were now becoming 

 scarce ; and this is natural, for he sets traps for them assiduously every 

 winter, and besides this there are now four gamekeepers for the same tract 

 of country for which some few years ago there was only one. He himself, 

 he told me, trapped eighteen cats during his first winter — that is, fifteen 

 years before ; and the innkeeper of the place, who was the gamekeeper before 

 the present one, told me that he had trapped sixteen cats in a fortnight, 

 but that was, he said, some thirty years ago. The innkeeper also told me 

 that he was the first gamekeeper appointed to that part of Sutherlaudshire. 

 Before his time no persistent efforts were made to exterminate cats, but 

 there was a class of men called 'fox-hunters,' — or ' hunt-foxers,' as I once 

 heard them termed by a man who spoke little more than his native Gaelic, — 

 corresponding to the English vermin-catchers, who were employed by the 

 farmers to keep down the number of cats when they became troublesome. 

 I was told by this innkeeper that the male Wild Cats paired with the female 

 domestic cats, and that he had had in his house kittens which were a cross 

 between the wild and the domestic breed." The keeper, my brother adds, 

 had great difficulty in killing this cat while in the trap, and it seriously 

 injured the dog which he had with him. — Arthur P. Morres (Britford 

 Vicarage, Salisbury). 



Marten Cat in Norfolk. — I should like to mention the capture of one 

 of these animals, which I believe has not hitherto been recorded. It was 

 trapped by a former keeper of ours, on Kelling Heath, in 1864. The 

 specimen is an old female, and is I believe the last but one that was killed 

 in Norfolk. It was stuffed by Travis, of Saffron Walden. Length about 

 eighteen inches and a-half, tail about ten inches and bushy, throat yellowish 

 white, ears large and erect. I saw a Badger, in the flesh, which was caught 

 in a rabbit-trap on Winterton Warren, between 1869 and 1874, but cannot 

 remember the exact year. Otters are still fairly numerous in the Broad 

 district. A pair which nested in the boat-house on the island in Somerton 

 Broad had two young ones of a distinctly different shade of colour, one 

 much darker than the other. Is this a general sexual distinction in the 

 garb of the young of this quadruped? — M. C. H. Bird (The Vicarage, 

 Canvey Island, South Benfleet.) 



[The last Marten taken in Norfolk, we presume, was that recorded by 

 Mr. F. Norgate (Zool. 1879, p. 171) as having been killed in the parish of 

 Haviugham, in the summer of 1878.— Ed.] 



The Badger in Oxfordshire. — Notwithstanding great persecution, 

 the Badger is still not very uncommon in North Oxfordshire and the 

 adjoining parts of the counties of Northampton and Warwick. A taxidermist 

 in this town has, during the past year, preserved no less than ten specimeus, 



