MARTS AND MART HUNTING 



it sleeps, eats, and stores its food. The latter 

 consists of rabbits, hedgehogs, birds, frogs, eels, 

 etc. There is a story to the effect that when a 

 party of hunters were digging to a foumart they 

 found some live eels in the earth, which they 

 promptly took to the nearest inn, and had them 

 cooked for breakfast, after which they returned 

 to the mart's lair and eventually dug him out. 

 The foumart's hunting ground was usually amongst 

 boggy land or heather-covered wastes. The 

 animal lays up in old barns, stone heaps, and 

 drains, though it is also found in earths of its 

 own. Ivike the dog-fox, the " hob" wanders 

 considerable distances in spring, and some long 

 runs have been recorded at this season of the year. 



After making exhaustive enquiries we have 

 arrived at the conclusion that the polecat is now 

 very rare indeed in lyakeland. We have recently 

 heard of a specimen being seen locally, but it is 

 safe to say that there are more pine martens than 

 foumarts in the fell country to-day. Not long ago 

 a gentleman sent us a polecat from Wales where 

 the animals are still quite plentiful. On his 

 estate the keeper secured no less than forty within 

 a period of twelve months, one of which was a 



freak," its coat being of a brownish shade, 

 something like that of a pine marten. A foumart 

 will work great havoc if it has access to a rabbit 

 warren, and it will kill poultry as well as rats. 

 The wild polecat will mate with the domesticated 

 ferret, and the cross-breds prove excellent workers, 

 being much quicker than ferrets, and not half so 

 liable to lie up with a dead rabbit. The hybrids 

 are also fertile. A friend of ours has bred polecat- 

 ferrets successfully, a "hob" being mated 

 with a white ferret, the ensuing litter being all 

 dark-coloured like their male parent. Most of 



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