Martens in Snow 337 



missed several rabbits from their traps, and one day in the 

 snow came on the track of the animal that had evidently 

 carried one of them off. This they followed for several 

 miles, till at length it abruptly terminated fifteen feet away 

 from the trunk of a solitary old pine tree, standing on the 

 hillside. After a careful examination of the ground, they 

 were forced to the conclusion that the animal had either 

 covered that distance in its final bound, and, alighting on 

 the trunk, had clung to it, and so left no mark on the snow, 

 or else that it had jumped into a branch, that was higher 

 from the ground than they could reach, and so gained the 

 tree in that way. There was an old crow's nest in the tree, 

 and, on one of the men kicking the trunk, the Marten 

 showed its head from that, and was shot. It was one of the 

 last to be killed in that neighbourhood, and was preserved 

 by the then Commissioner to our late most gracious Queen, 

 at Balmoral. 



The snow also discloses the extent of a Marten's wander- 

 ings in the course of a night, and sheds light on other 

 habits which, but for its agency, might pass unsuspected. 

 In Merionethshire, I frequently followed tracks for long 

 distances, in one instance close past the house of a keeper 

 of my acquaintance, who would have given a good deal to 

 have had the honour of catching a Marten, but who did 

 not dream that such an animal ever visited his beat. There 

 were a few hares, and rabbits, upon the ground, and the tracks 

 made by these are so similar to a Marten's, that one day 

 when I was out with him, and drew his attention to a line 

 of footmarks, he unhesitatingly pronounced them to have 

 been made by a rabbit, and not wishing to endanger the 

 animal's life, I did not enlighten him, though I knew it 

 to be the track of a Marten. 



More than once I followed a track close past farm houses, 

 where poultry were roosting out of doors, and the hen- 

 house itself could have been raided without difficulty, but 

 never once saw any inclination displayed to interfere with 

 fowls ; on the other hand, middens, and other places likely 

 to shelter rats, were seldom passed unnoticed. Such obser- 

 vations would seem to point in one of two directions. 



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