ETYMOLOGY OF NAMES OF MUSTELID^. 23 



the voracity of the animal, aud point back to the well-known 

 account of Olaus, as the German Vielfrass, the Latin Gulo, the 

 French Glouton, the English Glutton. It has often been as- 

 /^ serted that the Grerman Vielfrass, in the sense of glutton, is a 

 misunderstanding, it being derived from the Swedish word 

 fjdll, IS'orwegian fjall, rock or cliff; but this I cannot credit, 

 first, because the second syllable is not accounted for on such 

 supposition {/jdll — jarf is remote, and the animal is nowhere 

 so called, but simply ja>/); secondly, because both the Swed- 

 ish Olaus Magnus and the Norwegian Bishop Pontoppidan 

 give its voracity special prominence, and from this trait derive 

 the name jevf {gierv, "gierig", greedy?), translated Gulo and 

 Vielfrass. Another Norwegian clergyman, H. Strom, gives, in- 

 deed, the designation Fieldfrass^ besides jerf, to the animal, 

 which is of rare occurrence in his locality, but with the explicit 

 remark th2it Fieldfrass was, .beyond doubt, derived from the 

 German word Vielfrass. This is thus exactly contrary to the 

 usual German acceptation; and, in fact, ^'Felsenfrass" would 

 be a singular appellation. 



ZoBEL [Mustela zibellina]. — The name appears as early as the 

 latter half of the Middle Ages, under many variations, as the 

 modern Latin, sahelus, zibellina ; German, zehel (as early as the 

 ninth century, according to Graff), zohel ; Provencal, sebeli ; 

 English and old French, sable ; Swedish, sabel ; Eussian, sobol ; 

 Finnish, soboli — in every case meaning a northern peltry. In 

 the East, we find another variation, samur, in the Crimea and 

 Armenia, and thence to Servia and Wallachia. The name is 

 probably of Turanian origin. 



Marder [Mustela martes, 31. foina]. — This word now occurs 

 in Germanic and Romanic languages, in both either with or 

 without the second R, as the Spanish and Portuguese marta^ 

 in the former as a feminine noun, and likewise the French la 

 marte, though in some dialects la martre, the Proven§al mart, 

 Italian martora and martorella ; the English martin [or, oftener, 

 marten — Tr.] appears to be an easy way of saying martern, still 

 in use in some localities ; Dutch marter, Swedish mard^ Danish 

 maar. Seeking for the earliest form of the word, we first find 

 martes in Martial, the Spanish-born Roman poet ; but this can 

 scarcely be an old Latin word, as it is not found in Pliny or 

 other classical writers; and Martial often introduced foreign 



