lxviii Journal of Proceedings.
Dr. Cory and Mr. E. Letchford were chosen as auditors.
The President gave the account of the life and works of Mr. J. Eliot
Howard, F.R.S., an original member of the Club, which is included in
the Presidential Address (Trans. vol. iv. pp. 8-11), and proposed that a
vote of condolence should be sent to the family of the late Mr. Howard
by the Secretary. This proposal was unanimously agreed to.
Mr. Andrew Johnston, J.P., drew the attention of the members of the
Club to a ease reported in that day's ' Times,' in which the judges held
that birds used as decoys were " domestic animals," and that therefore
cruelty to them came within the Act. The effect of this decision would
be to put an end to a good deal of the bird-catching which went on
unless the bird-catchers found out some plan by which they could avoid
cruelty to the decoys.
The Secretary read the following note :—
Capture of a Badger (Meles taxus) in Essex.
By Robert Miller Christy.
Some eighteen months ago, when I had the pleasure of noting in
the ' Zoologist' the occurrence of a Badger in Essex, I did not think
that I should so soon be able to record another specimen in our county.
About a fortnight since one was found near High Wood, and has now
been stuffed by Mr. J. Crick, of Chelmsford, who has kindly furnished
me with information concerning it. The man who secured it had
known of its presence in the extensive woods round Writtle Park for
several years past, but was not able to catch it. However, one morning,
not long since, while passing through the woods before daybreak, his
dog made a rush at something which, when the man came up, proved to
be a dead Badger. The time was too short to allow of the dog having
killed it, so that in all probability it was dead, or very nearly so, before
it was discovered ; and this idea was confirmed on skinning the animal,
when Mr. Crick found that a large abscess had formed on the throat.
Of any other wound there was no sign. It was a good-sized female. It
is strange that the Essex hounds, which are often at High Wood, should
never have found the Badger, and this second occurrence within a short
period of an animal which not long since I should have classed with the
extinct members of the county fauna, affords some ground for believing
that the species may be nothing like so rare as is generally supposed.
Its well-known excessively shy and nocturnal habits may serve to keep
the animal well out of the way of its enemies. If there is yet a Marten
in Epping Forest, as Mr. English tells us, it is no wonder that Badgers
may still live in Essex almost undetected.
[The following is Mr. Christy's previous record, referred to above,
which we extract from the ' Zoologist,' 3rd ser., vol vi. (1882) p. 303 :—
'' The occurrence at the present day of so shy and retiring an animal as
the Badger in such a highly cultivated agricultural county as Essex is of
sufficient interest to deserve a record in the pages of the ' Zoologist.' I
have pleasure, therefore, in forwarding the following particulars of the
death of one. On the 2nd of April last some children who had been
gathering oxlips informed an old man named Spencer, who is in the
employment of my uncle, Mr. Joseph Smith of Great Saling, as foreman,
that they had found a Fox asleep on the edge of ' Newpster' (New-
pasture) Wood, close behind his house. A few days later they told him