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THE FAUNA OF THE " CEDAES," LEE, KENT. 

 By Joseph F. Green. 



In an Ordnance map dated 1800 this place is shown as so 

 many fields, partitioned out by small elms, and, although these 

 elms are now gigantic, the old arrangement is still visible. The 

 cedar trees are far, far older, being probably contemporary with 

 their neighbours, the famous Spanish chestnuts of Greenwich 

 Park, planted by the children of James the First. For some 

 thirty years I have resided more or less continuously in these 

 grounds, a suburban oasis of some forty acres, belonging to 

 Mrs. Penn ; so artificially laid out, that several generations 

 have learnt to excel at our national games, and yet sufficiently 

 wild and wooded to attract and protect a fair representation of 

 the animal life that haunts our great metropolis : so close to 

 London, that on an extra still night you may catch a weird echo 

 of sonorous Big Ben, and yet so far afield that you may perhaps 

 at the same time be charmed by the loud clear notes of a Night- 

 ingale, or be startled by the harsh scream of an Owl. Here, as 

 elsewhere, it has ever been my delight to make notes on all 

 matters appertaining to natural history, which enables me now 

 to give a short account of my personal experience of the " Cedars " 

 fauna. 



Our wild mammals are few, although we have our share of 

 Babbits, Bats, Voles, Field-Mice, and Mice (domestic). Hedge- 

 hogs, owing to their nocturnal and retiring habits, are not often 

 visible, but our night watchman occasionally sees them, and I 

 remember a couple that were hybernating in a sort of nest just 

 under the ground. The Dogs had scratched them up, but we 

 called them off, re-covered the little prickly animals, and all was 

 well. 



In 1903 I contributed a paper to the West Kent Natural 

 History Society on the birds of the "Cedars," and have only 

 one addition to make — a Wheatear, that strutted about on our 

 West Lodge lawns, May 2nd, 1904, and then fiew up into 



