A case in point is afforded by the distribution of stag-beetles and magpies in the county. Both these species are unknown in the district immediately round Harpenden, while the former, at any rate, are likewise unknown in the St Albans district, and apparently between that city and London. If, however, we travel from Harpenden to the east, magpies may be met with when we reach Codicote, while in the opposite direction they occur in the Hemel Hempstead district. As to the exact point where stag-beetles make their appearance in the latter direction the writer has no information, but they are to be met with in the neighbourhood of Rickmansworth and elsewhere on the Buckinghamshire border, and become quite common in that county. Grass-snakes, so far as the writer is aware, are likewise absent from the Harpenden neighbourhood, although on the Cambridgeshire side of the county they are quite common, as they are across the border. If the local distribution of these species were carefully worked out and mapped, we might perhaps be able to account for what is at present a puzzle. With the increase of population and building the wild fauna of Hertfordshire, like that of England generally, has been gradually becoming poorer in species--probably indeed from the time the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros were exterminated, as they possibly were, by our prehistoric ancestors. When the wolf, the bear, the wild cat, and the beaver disappeared, is quite unknown; but it is in comparatively modern times that the marten has been exterminated, a solitary individual of this species having been killed in the county within a score of miles of London, that is to say near Watford, so recently as December, 1872. Polecats appear to have almost if not quite disappeared from the county, although a straggler may occasionally enter from Buckinghamshire, where a few still survive; and one was trapped in Ware Park about 1885. Otters are rare, although a few occasionally appear in the lower part of the Lea valley, and some may enter the county from Buckinghamshire, in parts of which they are much more common, the Buckinghamshire Otter-hounds having killed over a score of these animals in 1908. Some years ago badgers were to be found in many parts of the county, a well-known haunt previous to 1840 being “Badger’s Dell” in Cassiobury Park. They still occur locally in certain parts of the Buckinghamshire side of the county, and probably elsewhere. Foxes owe their preservation mainly to the sporting instincts of the county gentry and farmers.