THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 793.— July. 1907 



THE MAMMALS OF SOUTH CAMBRIDGESHIRE. 

 By Albert H. Waters, B.A. 



I design in the following pages to describe what I have per- 

 sonally observed in the district south of the Fenland of Cam- 

 bridgeshire — say, from Waterbeach in the north to Chesterford 

 in the south — a large part of which is upland and more or less 

 wooded, but includes such marshy spots as Fowlmere and Dern- 

 ford Fen. 



I confine myself at present entirely to the Vertebrata, and 

 chiefly the Mammalia. Of the fishes, I shall say very little. In 

 the district comprehended within a radius of fifteen miles round 

 Cambridge I have spent most of my life, and when at home have 

 been rambling about it almost daily, whenever I have not been 

 confined to the house by accidents which have laid me low — not 

 a frequent incident, I am thankful to say. 



My observations go back to the sixties, and I cannot help but 

 contrast the thickly inhabited Cambridge of the present day with 

 what it was at the time when it was a garden city. Even in our 

 place of business in the centre of the town we had a large garden 

 on the east side of our house. But very little way from us, on 

 the west side, was the old Physic Garden, the precursor of the 

 present Botanic Gardens. On the south were the groves of 

 Downing College, about the bird-life of which I have notes enough 

 to make a volume. Even from the north there was an outlook 

 over gardens and the ' Lion Hotel ' bowling-green. 



I have been in Downing Grounds from the time I could first 

 toddle thither up to the closing of them to the public, and the 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. XI., July, 1907. U 



