REPORT OF MAMMAL GROUP
365
Sale of Publications
Publications have continued to sell satisfactorily, the Memoir
entitled the 'Clay Tobacco Pipe in Essex' being particularly
popular.
The Council would like to thank all those members whose
activities have helped to make 1970 a successful year and in
particular, those members who have led meetings and contributed
to the Club's publications.
Annual Report of the Mammal Group for 1970
The Group held seven meetings during 1970 including two
small mammal trapping meetings in Essex Naturalists' Trust
reserves and a work weekend at Fingrinhoe, Wick.
The most spectacular meeting was held in July and started
with badger watching at a large number of setts in the middle
and west of the county. Everybody then converged on a field
near Little Baddow where a barbecue had been arranged, with
some unusual meat available for sampling. A fox rally was then
conducted in Chelmsford and the meeting finished in the Brent-
wood area with a dawn deer watch. Most people saw badgers
and deer though few saw foxes. In spite of the meeting lasting
for about twelve hours throughout the night over forty people
attended, and even more had applied but could not be
accommodated. Numerically this was the Group's most success-
ful meeting for several years.
In September a joint deerwatching meeting was held with
the East Anglian Branch of the British Deer Society. Woods in
the Bishop's Stortford and Brentwood areas were visited and
most of those present saw some fallow deer.
The Group's meeting in December was also a General Meet-
ing of the Club and consisted of four talks on the distribution
of deer, badgers, weasels and stoats, and some Longworth mam-
mals. The talks summarised the present distribution and con-
trasted it with that known to Henry Laver as published in his
Essex Field Club Special Memoir in 1898.
The Group was also invited to stage a week-long outdoor
exhibition at Chelmsford during the town's Conservation Week,
as well as participating in the Clubs exhibits at Fingrinhoe, Wick
and Debden Library as their contribution to European Conser-
vation Year.
Attendances have been good at most Group meetings

the year and we feel that we have started the decade on the right
tracks.
B. D. Eastcott
Group Secretary