183 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES FROM THE 
BRADFORD CHURCHWARDENS’ ACCOUNTS. 
HERBERT E. WROOT, 
Bradford. 
THE churchwardens’ accounts for the Township and Parish of 
Bradford contain a considerable number of entries of payments of 
rewards under the Acts of Parliament of the years 1566, 1572, and 
1597, for the killing of animals considered to be vermin. The first 
such record is dated in the year following that in which the accounts 
open—namely, 1668. Although the practice of paying such rewards 
continued, in many parts of the country, down, it is said, to the 
Poor Law Reform of 1834, the entries of this character in the 
Bradford accounts end abruptly in 1748. They afford interesting 
evidence of the existence in and near Bradford of (1) Zvinaceus 
europeus (hedgehog or urchin) ; (2) Fe/¢s catus (wild cat) ; (3) Canis 
vulpes (fox); (4) Lutra lutra (otter); (5) Aedes meles (badger or 
gray); (6) Mustela putorius (polecat or foumart). Of these the most 
plentiful were the hedgehog, the deaths of no less than 180 being 
recorded. It is difficult to understand why such ceaseless warfare 
should have been waged upon these harmless creatures, but probably 
superstition was against them, and was all-powerful. They are even 
now supposed to suck the milk from the udders of cows as they lie 
on the ground, and the idea is not eradicated from the agricultural 
mind, even by its being pointed out that the operation would be 
a physical impossibility for a creature with so small a mouth as the 
hedgehog. The struggles of the illiterate churchwardens with the 
spelling of the words ‘urchin’ and ‘hedgehog’ are very amusing, and 
the diversity of ways which their ingenuity has devised, rival the 
well-known list of different modes of spelling Shakespere’s name. 
The existence of the wild cat in the district is especially interest- 
ing, the animal being long ago extinct in England. A few still occur 
in remote districts of the Scottish Highlands, but the time cannot 
be far distant when they will have become as completely exterminated 
caught in 1676, one in 1678, and the last in 1680. ‘The badger or 
‘gray,’ from the scarcity of mention of its name, seems to have been 
either very scarce or rarely seen. Only one specimen is referred to 
and that was killed in 1676 at Shipley. Although polecats are 
several times noted, it is somewhat curious that we have none of its 
congeners, the marten, the weasel, and the stoat. Otters seem to 
have been not uncommon, five having been killed, the last mentioned 
June 1895. 
