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THE ZOOLOGIST. 



by the Waveney. They had a curious custom of coming every year by the 

 same road, and a trap, unbaited, set in a run under the roots of a certain 

 old oak generally caught one or two each autumn. I remember on one 

 occasion helping to slaughter seven in a barn — two old ones and five nearly 

 full-grown young ones. In fact, they were then and there most annoyingly 

 plentiful. Matters are much altered now ; they are not extinct, but 

 decidedly rare. From Roydon and Bressingham, where I knew them 

 formerly, I hear that one is never seen now. The gamekeeper nearest to 

 me says they have killed three or four during the last ten years, but adds 

 that when his father, some twenty years ago, was keeper at Saham in 

 central Norfolk, they used to get a dozen or more every year. I have seen 

 their tracks in the snow not many years ago, and now T hear that there 

 was one this winter within two hundred yards of my house, and this is 

 pretty nearly all I can hear of them. Scarce but not extinct. They are 

 very easy to trap, and make themselves most obnoxious wherever they are, 

 clearing off whole broods of turkeys or emptying a dovecote, so farmers as 

 well as gamekeepers are in arms against them, and will soon exterminate 

 them. I have just learnt from my daughter (May 11th) that a few days 

 ago she saw the bodies of two Polecats on the keeper's gallows at Wood- 

 rising, in central Norfolk. As to Otters, I think they are about as common 

 as they used to be — that is, much commoner than is supposed. They are 

 nocturnal, and seldom seen, nor, except where Trout are preserved, is it 

 anybody's business to disturb them, and not one person in a hundred knows 

 an Otter's " seal " when they see it. Then they have all the marshes and 

 wet carrs as breeding-grounds. They are notoriously difficult to hold in a 

 trap, yet I remember a case in which one was caught in a small steel-fall 

 by the tips of the toes, close to the alder-root where he had his holt, and 

 was content to go in, trap and all, and wait till the keeper came, when a 

 very slight pull would have freed him. — H. T. Frere (Burston Rectory, 

 Diss). 



The Whiskered Bat in Cheshire. — In your article on the Whiskered 

 Bat, in 'The Zoologist' for May, you mention (p. 164) a specimen fouud 

 asleep on a wall at Fernilee, near Whaley Bridge. Mr. C. Oldham, the finder 

 of this specimen, caught another near Fernilee on April 26th, 1886. It was 

 flying about at midday, and he managed to knock it dowu with his hat. On 

 January 7th, 1 888, Mr. Oldham and myself visited the disused copper-mines 

 at Alderley Edge, aud found two Whiskered Bats hanging from the roof of 

 the workings. The walls and tops of the tunnels were covered with small 

 flies, together with a number of moths, principally Scotosia dubitata. We 

 again visited the mines on March 10th, but could find no bats in the 

 tunnels we had tried before ; but on examining one, the entrauce to which 

 was almost blocked up, we found one Whiskered and one Long-eared Bat. 

 All were 100 yards or more from the mouth of the tunnels. When first 



