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XIV. The Mammalia of Essex ; A Contribution towards
a List of the Fauna of the County.
By Henry Laver, M.R.C.S., F.L.S.
[Read December 17th, 1881.]
The Rev. Richard Lubbock, in commencing his account of
the Fauna of Norfolk, remarks that a sketch of the Mam-
malia of a county "may be comprised within a narrow
compass—species grow gradually scarcer and scarcer. When
we look at the trim fences and high cultivation of great part
of this district (Norfolk), a wide stretch of imagination is
necessary to carry the mind back to days departed, when the
urus, the bear, and the wolf ranged the forest, or traversed
the marsh, pursued by hunters nearly as savage as them-
selves."1 Our own county of Essex was, we are sure, the
home of these same wild animals, the urus, the bear, and the
wolf, and we may also place with them the wild hog, red deer,
and roebuck, as creatures which have been the unfortunate
victims of that rigorous cultivation mentioned above, which
is found to be necessary to the sustenance and happiness of
the higher creature, man. Cultivation and enclosure have
been carried in Essex to greater completion than in most
parts of England, and with the exception of Epping Forest
there is no extensive tract of woodland in the county. Our
wild and predaceous animals have in consequence been
diminished or exterminated, earlier than in more favoured
spots, where forests, mountains, and marsh have protected
them and delayed that extinction which is inevitable before
many years have expired.
It is, I think, a good idea to take stock, if I may be allowed
the expression, of our diminishing fauna before the dying out
of any more of our wild animals occurs; and in another
1 ['Observations on the Fauna of Norfolk, and more particularly on the
District of the Broads.' By the late Rev. Richard Lubbock, M.A., Rector
of Eccles. Norwich, 1845. New Edition, 1879.—Ed.]