Ground Vermin The Beech Marten. 257 



credit of foxes, " and yet there is no place where a fox could 

 get in." Less solitary than the pine marten, and more 

 generally open in its habits, the marteron has, to a certain 

 extent, warded off more successfully that eventuality of 

 becoming extinct to which these two handsome little animals 

 seem doomed, and is, consequently, still of common occur- 

 rence in many parts of the kingdom. Preferring rather 

 large and spreading trees to the close growing firs liked by 

 the pine marten, it can be more easily observed, and is, 

 therefore, more subject to danger ; hence, perhaps, it is 

 found on frequent occasions, pretty remote from the woods 

 in which it should find its lair, and, moreover, in rough hilly 

 stony places, often by the side of broken streams, and on the 

 slopes of rough moorland common in less cultivated parts. 



Its favourite haunt, however, is amongst trees, and 

 especially those which are nut growing, such as the beeches, 

 the most favoured of any, and probably influencing to some 

 extent the marteron's usual name of beech marten. Being 

 as expert and agile a climber as the pine marten, it proves 

 nearly as destructive a vermin amongst eggs and young 

 birds, and having no objection to leave its wooded shelter, it 

 is even more marauding amongst the ground-placed nests of 

 all our game birds, but probably most destructive to those of 

 grouse and black game. 



Mice of all sorts, and occasionally moles and water rats, 

 show conspicuously in the list of its victims, and the squirrel 

 is no less susceptible to the marteron's attacks than to those 

 of the pine marten. 



With the exception of the case above noted, when the 

 marteron visits a farmyard, its depredations are generally 



