ON A BLACK VARIETY OF THE WATER VOLE. 289 



Northamptonshire. — Lord Lilford, writing May 16th, 1890, 

 remarks, "I only once heard of a Black Water Vole in this 

 neighbourhood, and have very great doubts as to the correctness 

 of the report." 



Nottinghamshire. — Brown Voles are common in the little 

 stream which flows along the bottom of the deer paddock at 

 Bainworth, near Mansfield, but Mr. Whitaker pointed out to 

 Aplin the exact spot where he once saw a black one sitting on 

 the bank a few years ago. Mr. F. B. Whitlock, of Beeston, near 

 Nottingham, writes : — " I have occasionally met with the black 

 variety of the Water Vole on an island in the Trent, about a mile 

 from here. Curiously enough, I cannot remember seeing a full- 

 grown specimen, those that I have seen — and on one occasion 

 shot — having been about half-matured. They are not of a deep 

 black, but something of a mole-colour. The difference from the 

 ordinary variety is very conspicuous." 



Huntingdonshire. — Macpherson found a small specimen in 

 the Natural History Museum, London, labelled Huntingdonshire, 

 presented by Mr. W. W. Warner, in 1889. 



Cambridgeshire. — Mr. A. Moore Laws reports the existence 

 of Black Water Voles near Thetford. A man named Fenn was 

 paid to send some specimens to Macpherson from Soham, but 

 he never fulfilled his contract. Mr. W. Borrer writes, " I have 

 one specimen which I shot in Cow Fen, just behind Peterhouse, 

 in April, 1837. It was then very abundant there, as also about 

 Clayhythe, down the river from Cambridge. You do not, how- 

 ever, require information about these, and I have never seen the 

 variety anywhere else." The Bev. Leonard Jenyns (then of 

 Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire) wrote in 1846 : — "We have 

 an animal frequenting the fen-ditches of Cambridgeshire, and not 

 very unfrequent, which the people sometimes call the ' Water 

 Mole.' This is nothing more than a black variety of the common 

 Water Bat, the fur of which is sometimes of as deep and velvety 

 a hue as in the Mole; but every gradation of tint may be found 

 in different individuals between this uniform rich black and the 

 reddish brown which more ordinarily prevails. There is no other 

 difference whatever, besides colour, between these two kinds of 

 Water Bat, though the black has been considered by some as a 

 distinct species. On the 15th of June, 1830, I had a very large 

 female of the black sort brought to me, which had been killed in 



