THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 221.— May, 1895. 



THE MAMMALIAN FAUNA OF CHESHIRE. 

 By T. A. Coward and Charles Oldham. 



The following paper makes no claim to be an exhaustive 

 treatise on the existing Mammalia of Cheshire, but is merely a 

 summary of our present knowledge of the subject. It has been 

 written mainly in the hope that the facts therein recorded may 

 induce other observers to co-operate with the writers in the com- 

 pilation of such a list of the vertebrates of the county as shall 

 be of practical utility to resident naturalists, and not without 

 interest to all students of this section of the British fauna. 



Cheshire is a maritime county in the West of England, 

 separated from Lancashire on the north by the river Mersey 

 and its tributary the Tame ; from Yorkshire in the extreme 

 north-east by the ridge of hills which forms the watershed of the 

 Mersey and Yorkshire Ouse; from Derbyshire and Staffordshire 

 in the east by the rivers Etherow, Goyt, and Dane, tributaries of 

 the Mersey ; and from Flintshire and Denbighshire on the south- 

 east by the Dee. The county is bounded on the south by Shrop- 

 shire and parts of Staffordshire and Flintshire, but the border- 

 line is not a natural one. 



The greater part of the county, which has a total area of 

 1102 square miles, is an extensive and nearly level plain which 

 rests upon the New Red Sandstone, and is seldom more than from 

 two to three hundred feet above the sea-level. Here and there, 

 however, the older Triassic rocks rise abruptly from the sur- 

 rounding red marl, and attain an altitude of over 500 ft. at 

 Beeston Castle, Eddisbury, and Harrol Edge, near Frodsham, 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XIX. MAY, 1895. O 



