24 NORTH AMERICAN MUSTELID^. 



words into his Latin. In Anglo-Saxon, it only appears as 

 meardh ; whilst, on the other hand, in Germany, we find martarus 

 used by Hildegard and Albertus Magnus, in the twelfth and thir- 

 teenth centuries. The resemblance to the German verb " mar- 

 tern'' [to torment] is obvious; in fact, *' martern " might be de- 

 fined ^'to act like a marten", the proper implication being, not 

 the sanguinary murders the marten commits, but the palpable 

 torment which it designedly inflicts. Another derivation comes 

 decidedly ue^irer— martyr^ meaning a person tortured, from 

 martyr ium, torture, whence the verb first arose. The resem- 

 blance in sound may have occasioned the second E. in those 

 cases in which it appears. We might also seek to establish a 

 connection between '• marder", a marten, and " Morder", Ger- 

 man for a murderer; but the T, which occurs in a majority of 

 the forms of the word, is against this, as is also the fact that 

 the German name occurs in many languages to which " Mord-^ 

 and " Morder " do not belong. 



A second Romanic name of the Marten is faina; Spanish 

 and Italian the same, Portuguese />UM/ia, French lafouine; in 

 some dialects with a in place of u, as in certain Italian locali 

 ties faiua^ in Provence fagitino, fahino, Old French fayne; 

 Catalonian fagina, Belgic faweina^ in the Canton of Grau- 

 bundten further modified into Jierna. The obsolete German 

 names of certain pelts, Fehe^ Feh-ivamme, are very likely re- 

 lated. The word is not Latin as the name of an animal ; but 

 it may be inquired, with respect to the later forms, whether it 

 does not probably signify marta fagma, Beech-marten, as one 

 of the two European species of the genus is often named; 

 properly the Tree- or Pine-marten, in distinction from the 

 Stone- or House-marten, since the former lives in the forest," 

 the latter about buildings ; though very curiously, the Stone- 

 marten [Mustela foina] is the Martarus or Martes fagorum of 

 Albertus Magnus and afterward of Ray, whilst the Pine- 

 marten [M. martes] is distinguished as M. abiettim, ''Marten 

 of the firs". The precise distinction between fouinej foina = 

 Stone-marten, and marte, marges = Pine-marten, moreover, may 

 have been first set forth by Buffon and Linniieus, and have 

 obtained rather among zoologists than among the people at 

 large; the more valuable Pine-marten ["Edel-marder", liter- 

 ally " noble marten "] took the commonest name, leaving the 

 less popular one for the other rarer species. From this /oMi?ie, 



