200 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
six years ago a poacher of my acquaintance killed a beech, or as some- 
times called, ‘stone,’ Marten within less than a mile from my house. 
He found it while ‘rabbiting,’ his ferrets having run it out of a hole in 
a hedge-bank, and far away from woods. No doubt it had made an: 
excursion thither on the same business as the poacher himself. 
«‘ But in many of the fastnesses around the Forest of Dean I know 
that Martens, if not plentiful, are yet in goodly numbers. One of the 
Forest-keepers tells me that, five or six years ago, he used to see many, 
and shoot many, too, in the High Meadow Woods—a tract of the Forest 
which overhangs the River Wye; and there is the skin of one stuffed 
and mounted in the house of a farmer in that neighbourhood, which 
very recently fell to a gamekeeper’s gun. Again, a gipsy of my 
cognizance, who tents in all parts of the Forest, tells me that he and 
his tribe often meet with ‘Marten-cats,’ which he affirms to be far from 
uncommon in the woods near Blakeney and Lydney, where there is 
some rather heavy timber. He says they vary much in colour and 
markings—a remarkable fact, if fact it be.” 
In ‘The Zoologist’ for 1886 (p. 240) Mrs. Attwood Mathews, 
of Pontrilas Court, Hereford, has noticed the recent occurrence 
of the Marten in the county in which she resides, and the 
following year (Zool. 1887, p. 190) Mr. Cambridge Phillips 
reported the appearance of one near Brecon in September, 1886. 
He regards it as a rare animal in Wales at the present day. 
The illustrations to this volume, as we have said, are for the 
most part very poor. The best are copied from Bewick, the 
remainder being from different sources, and several of them 
wrongly lettered. For example, the bird figured on p. 19 as the 
Rock Dove, Columba livia, is the Stock Dove, C. @nas; that 
figured as the Nuthatch, Sitta cesia (p. 55), is the Nutcracker, 
Nucifraga caryocatactes. Of the two birds figured as Herons 
(p. 232) one is a Bittern, and none of the half-dozen warblers 
figured on p. 177 are named. 
The absence of dates, or precise reference to the time of year 
at which certain observations were made, is a serious drawback 
in estimating their value. Notwithstanding these defects, the 
extracts which we have given above sufficiently show that the 
subject matter of the book is good enough to have deserved 
better treatment than it has: received at the hands of the printer 
and publisher. 
