Page:VCH Berkshire 1.djvu/216

A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE principal prey, the field voles, are not plentiful either, which may perhaps account for the comparative scarcity of the weasel. 16. Badger. Meles meles, Linn. Bell Meles taxui. These interesting animals survive in Berk- shire in considerably greater numbers than is usually supposed. To a great extent they share the earths of the foxes, and do much good by cleaning them out and enlarging them, at times when the earths are tainted with mange. Owing to their quiet nocturnal habits they escape notice. But the occasional surprise of one in a cornfield, or the discovery of their residence close to a house, reveals the fact that they have lived for years where their presence was not suspected. The writer found a dead one in Wittenham Wood in 1896. Another had an earth in the banks of Ginge Brook, near Lockinge. In Sparsholt wilderness (Colonel Hippisley) the keeper climbed a tree to watch the fox cubs come out, and saw two badgers emerge from an old earth. There are badger earths in Bear Wood, near the White Horse, and some were believed to live down in the vale at Sparsholt Copse. There were also earths at Lambourn Woodlands, and probably in the Kennet valley. The hounds not infre- quently find and kill a badger when drawing in thorn cover or furze brake. A badger, or perhaps more than one, is known to fre- quent a meadow below East Hendred Rec- tory. The vast areas of downland, now almost deserted and turned into grass, between Woolley and the Wiltshire border, and on both sides of the Upper Lambourn valley, probably abound in badgers at the present time, for no one interferes with them in any way. An eccentric but sporting character who resided at Dorchester, on the Oxford- shire side of the Thames, appeared at a local festival in which there was a procession in costume, with himself and his pony entirely covered with badger skins, it having been one of his amusements to dig them out, with the aid of terriers who showed which way the hole turned by their incessant barking. 17. Otter. Lutra lutra, Linn. Bell Lutra vulgaris. The otter is also common in the county on the side bounded by the Thames. This river and its tributaries are greatly frequented by the otters, which either lie in the withy beds, or on the crowns or under the roots of the in- numerable pollard willows. Their principal food among the fish are chub and eels, though they also feed largely on frogs, caught in the wet grass and in the ditches. Local riverside persons make a practice of finding out the trees in which the otters live, when the grass is long and track them in the mornings. The poor animal is then trapped in a gin, and the body taken round and exhibited, as it is supposed, in the interest of fishermen. It is afterwards sold to be stuffed, or it is raffled for in some riverside inn. Otters recently took up theirabodein the ballast holes near the railway between Steventon and Wantage, and then, working up the brook, discovered a series of trout pools made some three miles off in Betterton Glen above Lockinge House. They killed nearly all the trout, and could not be caught, though as many as fourteen traps were set at one time. One of these otters, when crossing the line, was killed by a train. Some are said to have been seen at the heads of brooks quite deep among the downs. Mr. A. H. Cocks caught an otter by hand in the Thames above Bisham in 1873 and kept it in confine- ment until 1878, when it was killed by another otter. RODENTIA 18. Squirrel. Sciurus leucourus, Kerr. Bell SCIUTUS vulgaris. Berkshire squirrels must represent a large part of the population of these pretty little rodents existing in the home counties. Wind- sor Great Park and the woods of Virginia Water are full of them. And they are very numerous all through the woodland part of the downs, at Catmore, Woolley, and Ilsley, up the Kennet valley, as well as above Lock- inge, and in the woods by the Thames. There is also a race of garden squirrels, which keep to isolated country house gardens, and often become very tame. Some of these, in the garden of" the late Mr. C. Provis at Kingston Lisle, were almost domesticated, and used to climb the ivy regularly to be fed at an upper window. The great enemies of these garden squirrels are the cats, which watch at the foot of the trees and kill all the young ones when they descend to the ground. 19. Dormouse. Muscardinus avellanarius, Linn. Bell Myoxus avellanarius. The woodmen of the downs call these ' sleep-mice.' They are not uncommon in the woods round Lilley, Catmore and Fawley, 170