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Show 790 MR. CLARK ON A MARTEN'S SKULL FROM THE FENS. [Dec 2. 9. On a Skull of a Marten from Burwell Fen, Cambridgeshire. By J. W . CLARK, F.Z.S. [Received December 2, 1873.] The skull I have the pleasure of exhibiting this evening was found in Burwell Fen, Cambridgeshire, in July last. Burwell Fen lies on the right bank of the Cam, about eight miles below Cambridge, occupying a wide bay included between the last spurs of the chalk hills, which here come down to the lowlands, and terminates in a bold bluff at the village of Reche, and a long ridge of no great height at the village of Wicken further down the river. In consequence of this geological conformation of the country, a larger quantity of remains of extinct mammals and birds have been found in Burwell Fen than almost anywhere else. They would seem to have been washed into the bay I have described above and there to have lain. The Museum of the University possesses a nearly complete skeleton of a Beaver from this locality, besides skeletons, more or less complete, of Bos primigenius, Sus scrofa, Cervus elaphus, and Cervus capreolus. This is the first time, so far as I can discover, that the Marten has been found in a subfossil state in this country, though other Muste-lidae, the Polecat and the Weasel, have been recorded by Prof. Owen* from caves; nor can I find that it has occurred in France. I have been unable, from lack of materials, to compare this skull with a sufficiently large series; so that I can do no more than refer it to the genus Martes, without entering upon thevexedquestion whether there is one or two species in this country. The skull is rather larger, as all Fen skulls are, than any other of the genus that I have been able to compare with it. So far as I know, these animals have always been rare in Cambridgeshire; and the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, who lived at Bot-tesham, near Burwell, has written the following note on a stuffed specimen now in the Cambridge Museum : -" This appears to be a rare animal in Cambridgeshire. I have heard of its having been taken formerly at Madingley, and also at Allington Hill. The only specimen which, to m y knowledge, has occurred of late years is one that was killed at Caxton in August 1844, and is now in the Museum of the Cambridge Philosophical Society."-Fauna Cantabrigiensis, MS. p. 7. There is a tradition that there were formerly large forests of beech where Burwell Fen now is ; and this is supported by the discovery of trunks of trees of large size and quantities of beech-mast in the peat of that fen. Moreover the ' Liber Eliensis,' a record drawn up by a monk of Ely shortly after the Norman conquest, alludes to the " copia mustelarum " there existing in his day. I do not, of course, mean to refer his " mustelae" to the Marten exclusively ; but I allude to the passage merely to show that the wild animals then existing were numerous precisely where they are now few ; for Polecats, Stoats, and Weasels are now rarely met with in that part of the country, where the woods have almost wholly disappeared. * British Fossil Mammals and Birds, p. 112 ct seq. |