of the wood. This leaves the ground covered with seven stages of growth,
the large trees remaining unfelled. With the exception of this annual
disturbance of a seventh of the area, and a few days' hunting and
shooting, limited by the difficulty of beating such extensive tracts of
cover, the wood remains undisturbed for the twelve months, and all wild
animals are naturally tempted to make it a permanent home.

As I have said, the wood stands on the banks of the Thames, below the old
fortress of Sinodun Hill, and opposite to the junction of the River Thame.
All the British land carnivora except the martin cat and the wild cat are
found in it. The writer recently saw the skin of a cat which had reverted
to the exact size, colouring, and length of fur of the wild species,
killed in the well-known Bagley Wood, an area of similar character, but of
much greater extent, at a few miles distance in the direction of Oxford. A
polecat was domiciled in Wittenham Wood as lately as August, 1898. Though
this animal is reported to be very scarce in many counties, there is
little doubt that in such woods it is far commoner than is generally
believed. Being mainly a night-hunting animal it escapes notice. But in
the quiet of the wood it lays aside its caution, and hunts boldly in the
daytime. The cries of a young pheasant in distress, running through some
thick bramble patches and clumps of hazel, suggested that some carnivorous
animal was near, and on stepping into the thicket a large polecat was seen
galloping through the brushwood. Its great size showed that it was a male,
and the colour of its fur was to all appearance not the rich brown common
to the polecat and the polecat cross in the ferret, but a glossy black.
This, according to Mr. W.E. de Winton, perhaps the best authority on the
British _mustelidae_, is the normal tint of the male polecat's fur in
summer. "By the 1st of June," he writes, "the fur is entirely changed in
both sexes. The female, or 'Jill,' changes her entire coat directly she
has young; at the end of April or the beginning of May. The male, or