Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/209

MAMMALS As the mammals indigenous to the British Islands are neither nu- merous as species nor yet of very varied natural affinities, and as a certain percentage of these are marine forms, which are only most casual visitors to the non-tidal parts of the Severn, it follows that Worcestershire has but a short list of indigenous species. The number and description of the mammals of a county, unlike the birds, depend to a large extent on its climate or, in other words, its geographical position. For example, the greater horse-shoe bat, the serotine bat, and the dormouse, which frequent the southern counties, are very rarely met with so far north as Worcestershire. The Cervidce, or deer, have become extinct in the county since the seventeenth century. The disafforestation of Malvern Chase and Fecken- ham Forest under Charles I. must have largely reduced their number. The Session's records contain evidence, an indictment for killing them, of the existence of wild deer in Malvern Chase in 1614. These were most likely red deer {Cervus elaphus) ; probably the Civil War led to their prac- tical extermination here, they continued for some time longer in Wyre Forest. The deer remained in the Gloucestershire Forest of Dean until living memory, and an occasional straggler found its way into the old limits of Malvern Chase in Worcestershire. But practically the wild red deer became extinct in the county about the middle of the seven- teenth century. From that date the only deer have been the fallow deer [Cervus dama) in the different parks. Worcestershire has not like its neighbour Staffordshire been for- tunate in retaining the British wild cattle {Bos taurus) on its list. No doubt these animals at one time, up to what date is uncertain, wandered over Cannock Chase, Pensnett Chase, and the north of the county, but the development of the minerals in north Worcestershire must have been fatal to the wild cattle, and the county was not sufficiently lucky to pos- sess such a park as Chartley to shelter and protect them. The modern improvements that have in the last sixty years been made in the Severn have effectively prevented any of the marine mammals from now visit- ing the county, even if the reason which brought them to it was not disappearing. It is well known that both seals and porpoises are much addicted to salmon and if salmon are numerous will follow that fish some way up a river. The appearance of a seal, probably the common seal [Phoca vitii/ina), has been recorded on one or two occasions in the early part of the nineteenth century, while a casual porpoise {Phocana communis) has been recorded within living memory as appearing in the Severn within the county. The theory of the fishermen that when a shoal of 171