28 NORTH AMERICAN MUSTELID.E. 



arate his boccamela ("hoDey-moiith" — as we should say, "hav- 

 ing a sweet tooth "), which is, however, a species scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable from P. vulgaris {cf. Zool. Gart. 1867, p. 6S). Au- 

 bert and Wimmer, on the other hand, argue for Miisiela foina., 

 as this animal is common in Greece, where it is still called 

 hr\<;'^ the latter position is certainly well taken, and the 

 Marten, as the larger animal, better fulfils the Homeric indica- 

 tion just given; but the expression "white underneath" is 

 only true of the throat of the Martens, for both species of 

 Mustela are dark-colored on the belly, and in this respect very 

 different from the Weasel. For the rest, it is much more prob- 

 able that Aristotle named both the Marten and the Weasel 

 together, than that he distinguished two kinds of Weasels and 

 knew nothing whatever of the Marten. 



Hermelin [Putorhis erminea]. — Though this name sounds 

 like a foreign word, it is nevertheless probably of German ori- 

 gin, since not only are there several provincial variations of 

 less strange accent, like Heermdnchen and Hdrmchen, but there 

 is also the simple harmo of old German manuscripts of the 

 ninth to the eleventh century (Graff, althochdeutscher Sprach- 

 schatz). From this came harmelin, of the twelfth century, 

 simply the diminutive. The name went with the peltries into 

 foreign lands, becoming the Italian arniellino, the Spanish 

 armino, the French [and English] ermine — originally, with Al- 

 bertus Magnus, who had many French forms of names, ermirii- 

 iim, — and came back to the German as Hermelin, with a foreign 

 accent, on the last syllable. The she-fox Ermeleyn, in the Fable of 

 "Eeinecke Fuchs" ["The Beasts at Court"], obviously derived 

 her name from this animal. In Lithuanian, we find szarmit or 

 szarmonys2i^ thQ name of the same animal, which is the same as 

 harmo, according to the rules for the rendering of the sound, 

 just as the Lithuanian szirdis is the German herz. The inter- 

 pretation of Hermelin as the "Armenian Mouse" is thus vir- 

 tually refuted. The Swedes call the animal ross-kat and le-katy 

 the latter probably shortened from Lemmingskatze, since the 

 creature is destructive to Lemmings. In North France, we find 

 for the Ermine the name roselet^ obviously indicating its red- 

 dish color, and with this corresponds the fabulous name Eossel, 

 offspring of the J]rmeleyn. The South European languages 

 have no special name of their own for the Ermine, since it is 

 there found only in the mountains, as the Southern Alps and 

 the Balkan for example. 



