NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 199 
Badgers are reported to be occasionally met with, notably in 
the hanging woods of Penyard Hill and on the slope of Howle 
Hill, a lofty eminence overlooking the Wye, some four miles 
below the town of Ross, where one was captured weighing twenty- 
seven pounds,—“ not one of the largest,” says our author, “ for in 
my notes I have record of many weighing at least a third more.” 
A story is told (p. 190) of a Fox and Badger being found by 
terriers in the same drain, and beside the Badger lay a china egg, 
one of those in common use as “ nest-eggs,” which no doubt had 
been taken from a farm close by, and which, notwithstanding 
sharp teeth and powerful jaws, had proved “a nut too hard to 
crack.” 
Writing of the occurrence of the Marten, which is still found 
occasionally in the district,—Siluria,—the author quotes an 
interesting letter from “a friend resident in a western shire,” 
whose uncle, a master of hounds for forty seasons “used to hunt 
Marten-cats very early in the season with the young hounds and 
a few old ones to teach them, as he said, to ‘pack’ well.” 
This correspondent says :— 
“The scent of a Marten-cat is so strong that it is hardly possible 
for hounds to lose it; and my uncle used to say that it drew them 
together and taught them to pack well, so that when they began 
fox-hunting later on it almost saved the expense of an extra whip. 
Foxes were so scarce in those days that we could not afford to go cub- 
hunting in the early part of the season, or we should have had many 
‘blank’ days before the end. Of course, now that foxes are more 
plentiful, young hounds can be entered to the legitimate scent at the 
beginning. We used to find the Marten-cats in large coverts, and it 
was a common occurrence for one to give the hounds a run of three or 
four hours in a thick cover, the animal every now and then taking to 
atree. From this it would be dislodged by some one climbing up to 
it, when it would run along a bough to the outside end, then drop into 
the cover, and away again, although perhaps twenty couple of hounds 
might be baying at it under the tree. I have seen one ‘treed’ at least 
a dozen times before it was killed.” 
**T question the correctness of my friend’s conjecture as to the 
Marten being extinct in the shire of which he speaks. Indeed, I have 
evidence of its existence in that county, though not in his neighbour- 
hood. In my own, I am happy to say, it is far from being extinct, 
many recent cases of its capture having come to my knowledge. Only 
