ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MAMMAL GROUP, 1969 305
from Cambridge. Mr Thompson expressed his willingness to
accept specimens from members. The former was designated a
General Meeting of the Club. Our thanks to the two speakers,
especially Jan Taylor in view of the difficulties under which he
operated.
One new venture by the. group was an instructional week-end
at Fingrinhoe Wick, which was attended by nineteen members
plus other day visitors. The programme included skinning
demonstrations and the techniques of small mammal trapping
and badger watching. A visit to St. Osyth Deer Park was also
included.
An always popular meeting, a bottle hunt, was arranged in
October and as usual was well attended with eight cars present,
although there appeared to be a dearth of bottles containing
mammal remains. The most found by any one car being ten.
The rendezvous was Great Leighs Village Hall where tea had
been laid on and this was followed by the identification of some
of the remains.
Amongst the mammal survey meetings two held in June and
July deserve special mention. One was a trapping session in
East London where a variety of sites from residential gardens
in Ilford through Wanstead and West Ham Parks to the Northern
Outfall Sewer were trapped and some interesting results
obtained. The other meeting was in the Rayleigh area where
permission had been obtained from the Ministry of Defence for
a small party to set traps on Foulness. The results were not
spectacular but every catch helps to complete the distribution
maps for the county.
Another fox rally was held in the early part of the year,
meeting at 2 a.m. in Romford. One fox was seen in car head-
lights by some of those members who forced themselves out into
the cold night. This was a joint meeting with the London Natural
History Society and it was a pity that none of their members
came along.
The attendance at most field meetings was good and we hope
to see this continue during the seventies as the collection of
records is an important part of the work of the group.
B. D. Eastcott.