790 MR. CLARK ON A MARTEN'S SKULL FROM THE FF.NS. [DeC. 2. 



9. On a Skull of a Marten from Burvvell Fen, Cambridge- 

 shire. By J. W. Clark, F.Z.S. 



[Received December 2, 1873.] 



The skull I have the pleasure of exhibiting this evening was found 

 in Burwell Fen, Cambridgeshire, in July last. Burvvell Fen lies on 

 the right bank of the Cam, ahout eight miles below Cambridge, occu- 

 pying a wide bay included between the last spurs of the chalk hills, 

 which here come down to the lowlands, and terminates in a bold 

 bluff at the village of Reche, and a long ridge of no great height at 

 the village of Wicken further down the river. In consequence of this 

 geological conformation of the country, a larger quantity of remains 

 of extinct mammals and birds have been found in Burwell Fen than 

 almost anywhere else. They would seem to have been washed into the 

 bay I have described above and there to have lain. The Museum of the 

 University possesses a nearly complete skeleton of a Beaver from this 

 locality, besides skeletons, more or less complete, of Bos jmmigenius, 

 Sus scrofa, Cervus elaphus, and Cervus capreolus. 



This is the first time, so far as I can discover, that the Marten has 

 been found in a subfossil state in this country, though other Muste- 

 lidce, the Polecat and the Weasel, have been recorded by Prof. Owen* 

 from caves ; nor can I find that it has occurred in France. I have 

 been unable, from lack of materials, to compare this skull with a suffi- 

 ciently large series ; so that I can do no more than refer it to the genus 

 Martes, without entering upon thevexedquestion whether there is one 

 or two species in this country. The skull is rather larger, as all Fen 

 skulls are, than any other of the genus that I have been able to com- 

 pare with it. So far as I know, these animals have always been rare in 

 Cambridgeshire ; and the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, who lived at Bot- 

 tesham, near Burwell, has written the following note on a stuffed 

 specimen now in the Cambridge Museum : — " This appears to be a 

 rare animal in Cambridgeshire. I have heard of its having been taken 

 formerly at Madingley, and also at Allington Hill. The only spe- 

 cimen which, to my knowledge, has occurred of late years is one that 

 was killed at Caxton in August 1844, and is now in the Museum of 

 the Cambridge Philosophical Society."- — Fauna Cantabriyiensis, 

 MS. p. 7. 



There is a tradition that there were formerly large forests of beech 

 where Burwell Fen now is ; and this is supported by the discovery 

 of trunks of trees of large size and quantities of beech -mast in the 

 peat of that fen. Moreover the ' Liber Eliensis,' a record drawn up 

 by a monk of Ely shortly after the Norman conquest, alludes to the 

 " copia mustelarum " there existing in his da}-. I do not, of course, 

 mean to refer his " mustelse " to the Marten exclusively ; but I allude 

 to the passage merely to show that the wild animals then existing were 

 numerous precisely where they are now few ; for Polecats, Stoats, and 

 Weasels are now rarely met with in that part of the country, where 

 the woods have almost wholly disappeared. 



* British Fossil Mammals and Birds, p. 112 ct set/. 



