CHANGES IN THE COLORATION OF THE PINE MARTEN 209 



SEASONAL CHANGES IN THE COLORATION 

 OF THE PINE MARTEN. 



By Frances Pitt. 



It is curious, considering the attention that has been given 

 to the Martens by writers on European mammals, that the 

 considerable seasonal change in the appearance of the Pine 

 Marten, Maries martes, Linn., has been so generally ignored. 

 The earlier authors merely noted the varying colour of the 

 chest, some attributing it to age, others to sex and specific 

 difference. The elder Macgillivray, in his British Quadrupeds 

 (1838), said young specimens have yellow throats, while "in 

 old individuals the whole fore-neck and part of the breast 

 are white, or greyish-white." And he added that the yellow 

 colour fades in museum specimens. 1 He was referring to 

 Scottish specimens. Thompson (1838), writing of Irish 

 examples, calls the yellow-breasted ones Pine Martens, and 

 those with white chests Beech Martens, but adds that the 

 yellow gives place to white with advancing age. 2 Bell, too, 

 though doubtful about the matter, considers the difference 

 to be specific, and says : " The Beech Marten, or Common 

 Marten, is, in this country at least, more frequently met with 

 than the yellow-throated." 3 Even Alston, in his paper 2 in 

 which he established the fact that we have only one Marten, 

 the Pine Marten, in these islands, and that the Beech 

 Marten {Alartes foina, Erxleben) has never been found this 

 side of the English Channel, apparently accepted, as the 

 explanation of the long held idea of two species being 

 present, the assertion that all yellow-throated Martens were 

 immature specimens. The only hint of a seasonal change 



1 Quoted by E. R. Alston in a paper " On the British Martens," 

 Proc. Zool. Soc, 1879, pp. 468-74. 



2 Ibid. 



3 Bell, History of British Quadrupeds, 1st ed., 1837, p. 171. 



