WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS 



and probably when pounced upon he does not die without 

 a severe battle. 



There are said to be two kinds of martens here, the 

 pine-marten and the beech-marten; the former having a 

 yellow mark on the breast, and the latter a white one. I 

 do not, however, believe that they are of a distinct species, 

 but consider the variety of shade in the colour of the breast 

 to be occasioned by difference of age, or to be merely accid- 

 ental — having frequently killed them in the same woods 

 with every intermediate shade, from yellow to white on 

 their breasts; the animals being perfectly alike in every 

 other particular. The oldest looking martens had gener- 

 ally a whiter mark than the others, but this rule did not 

 apply to all.* 



* St John's view s on this question have been fully confirmed in recent years. At the 

 time when he was writing themajority of zoologists firmly held that both the pine-mar- 

 ten {Mustela martes) and the beech-marten {M.foina) were indigenous to Britain; and 

 it was not until 1S79 that the conclusion arrived at by the late Mr E. A. Alston, after 

 exhaustive investigation, was accepted as the true one — namely, that the beech-marten 

 never was a member of the British fauna. The mistake had arisen through the belief that 

 a yellow breast was the invariable mark of distinction in the pine-marten. 



This gallant little hunter, once plentiful in most parts of Great Britain and Ireland, is 

 probably now extinct in England, except in the extreme northern counties, but it still 

 survives in dwindling numbers in Wales and Ireland; while it keeps a good hold upon 

 the deer-forests in the Scottish Highlands. — Ed. 



