MARTS AND MART HUNTING 



the Continent, the beech-marten — hardly rlis- 

 tinguishable from our pine marten — has a white 

 or cream white throat in many instances, and this 

 is usually given as one of the characteristics 

 which distinguish the pine from the beech marten. 

 It is, however, unreliable, for the colour is ex- 

 tremely variable, the only sure means of iden- 

 tification being the teeth, and the width of the 

 skull. The eartips are white. The pine marten 

 is also a dweller across the Channel, but its 

 confrere, the beech marten, does not extend its 

 range to Great Britain. Speaking of the beech 

 marten reminds us of an incident that happened 

 in France. 



Not far from a stream were two large concrete 

 tanks, sunk level with the ground. Each held 

 two or three feet of stagnant water, inhabited by 

 numbers of frogs and newts. The frogs spent much 

 of their time sitting about on bits of wood which 

 were floating on the surface of the water. On 

 our second visit to these tanks we found the 

 freshly drowned body of a beech marten in one 

 of them. Apparently what had happened was 

 this : The tank, some six feet deep, and not quite 

 half full of water, had proved a death trap to the 

 marten, which, attracted by the frogs sitting on 

 the floating debris, had attempted to reach them, 

 and had fallen in. None of the pieces of wood 

 floating in the water were sufficiently stable to 

 afford the marten a footing, so it was unable to 

 spring to the top of the tank and thus had perished 

 miserably. 



In the lyake District the marten's average 

 litter number appears to be three. Pine martens 

 are still to be found on the fells, and we imagine 

 that there are probably more of them in Lakeland 

 than elsewhere. In Scotland the marten is 



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