MAMMALS The mammalian fauna of Cornwall is very representative, but contains no species of limited distribution or of unexpected occurrence except the grey seal. The scarcity of woods over the greater part of the country has no doubt had some influence on the occurrence and distribution of the terrestrial mammals, but the larger carnivora the badger, the fox, and the polecat have their stronghold not so much in the interior as in the rough broken cliff-land of the coast. The smaller land species have unfortunately received very little attention, and the bats have apparently been ignored by local observers for more than forty years. The country distribution of the bats in particular is very imperfectly known, and the list of county species may not yet be complete. The geographical position of Cornwall and the long extent of seaboard suggest great possibilities as regards marine forms, but in the past the identification of the Cetacea has too often been a matter of assumption than the result of competent examination. The most noteworthy features of Cornish mammalian life on land are the abundance of the badger and the otter, and the persistence of the polecat. The badger is distributed throughout the entire county and is locally very plentiful both inland and near the sea. In several places in the cliff on the north coast the badger and the fox have made earths together and appear to live in perfect harmony. In the almost impenetrable oak scrub between Millook and Dizzard Head the mixed population is relatively dense, though the foxes, of course, are greatly in the minority. The otter is almost ubiquitous, and the paths made by its traffic are often very much in evidence. Lately it has been more than usually conspicuous in the upper reaches of the streams from Bodmin Moors, where they pass over the edge of the plateau and tumble down over a rocky bed to the lowland beneath. The polecat is perilously near extinction, but still breeds on rough, lonely cliff-land on the north and probably in one or two places on the south coast as well. In spite of the efforts of gamekeepers the stoat and weasel are still plentiful. The smaller rodents, too, are abundant, and even the bank vole may prove to be fairly common when better known. Whales, dolphins, grampuses, and porpoises are all fairly well known visitors to the Cornish seas, but the chief interest in the marine mammalia appears to centre round the seals of the Bristol Channel and the Land's End and the grey seals that are almost always so conspicuous among the western islands of the Scillonian archipelago. Jonathan Couch in his Cornish Fauna and elsewhere, Dr. W. P. Cocks in his often-quoted Fauna of Falmouth (1849), anc ^ Dr. W. K. Bullmore in his lengthy article on the Cornish Vertebrate Fauna in the Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (1861), laid an excellent foundation to 348
