136 THE ZOOLOGIST, 



where was a large wood, then unpreserved, which also, in his 

 recollection, not unfrequently held Polecats. 



" It is a sad fact that there are so few English landowners 

 who seem to take any interest whatsoever in the preservation of 

 our few remaining wild animals, or who, like the late Charles 

 Waterton, take more delight in attracting the living creatures 

 about them, and studying their habits, than in securing stuffed 

 specimens for a collection. If here and there the owners of a few 

 adjoining estates would combine in affording protection to such 

 creatures as the Badger, Marten, Otter, and the rarer birds of 

 prey, particularly Owls of all kinds, surely something might even 

 now be done at least to retard the inevitable extermination to 

 which some of them are otherwise doomed. 



" The particularly interesting account given in ' The Zoolo- 

 gist ' for 1888 (pp. 6, 7), of the establishment of a thriving 

 colony of Badgers in Leicestershire, shows that the reintroduction 

 of that animal, at least in favourable localities, is quite possible ; 

 and I cannot but think that where large woods are numerous and 

 not much disturbed, the Marten too might hold its own, if turned 

 down at a season when food is plentiful, as in June or July. 

 The chief drawbacks to the experiment would probably be the 

 wandering habits of this animal, and the misdirected zeal of the 

 "collector". The difficulty of procuring live Martens for this 

 purpose from the Continent would, perhaps, be considerable, but 

 the experiment would, I think, be far from impossible. I once saw 

 a freshly-killed Marten at the shop of a Woodbridge birdstuffer 

 (since dead) named Heffer, who told me it had just been brought 

 over in a yacht from Norway." 



Bedfordshire. — Mr. J. Steele Elliott, of Sutton Coldfield, 

 noticing the absence of any records of the occurrence of the 

 Marten in Bedfordshire, has been good enough to forward a copy 

 of a long letter from " an old keeper of 45 years' standing," which 

 appeared in ' The Field ' of 5th May, 1859. From this com- 

 munication, which is too discursive to print in its entirety, I 

 make the following extracts : — " Martens are fond of large and 

 old woodlands ; their resort is the hollow old doddrel trees, in 

 holes inade by Woodpeckers,* sometimes in Kite's or Magpie's 



* This must surely be a mistake. We never saw a hole made by any 

 Woodpecker that was large enough to admit a Marten, or even a Squirrel, 

 though we arc well aware that this is no< the first time the statement has 



