342 Wild Life in Wales 



each stride. When it reached the rocks above (where two 

 barrels were fired at it, I believe, and hope, without effect), 

 individual jumps of greater extent were made, up what was 

 evidently a well-known road, but at the time covered with 

 snow ; but as they were inaccessible to human foot, they 

 could not be measured. That Marten apparently went to 

 ground in a cleft in the rock, far up above us, and well out 

 of reach of even the intrepid Jones, who would fain have 

 followed it. Soon afterwards, the said Jones appeased 

 himself by shooting a very mangy Fox, and strode off, 

 later in the day, with it slung from his gun, over his 

 shoulder, on a long tramp to Dinas Mawddwy, where, 

 by custom, every Fox killed in the parish has to be hung up 

 for so many days, to entitle its slayer to the seven-and- 

 sixpenny reward paid for its destruction. Mangy Foxes 

 were rather numerous at the time of which I write, and 

 by the local hunters they were believed to be "imported 

 animals, which had come to the mountains, from distant 

 hunting counties, to cure themselves of the malady," there 

 being a local belief that mange never long survives the 

 Merionethshire hill air. However that may be, the 

 individual referred to above had recently had a very bad 

 attack, but had completely recovered. Half his body, and 

 the whole of his brush, had been entirely bared of hair ; but 

 the skin was now quite healthy, and covered with a thick 

 growth of nice young fur, looking like velvet pile, and he 

 was, I think, the fattest Fox I remember to have seen killed. 

 Whether the mange survives long or not, the Fox that 

 carries it here will certainly not do so, unless he has all 

 his wits about him. With the first fall of snow, hunters 

 who rather prefer a cold scent will be on his track, and the 

 result of "breaking boldly," when unkennelled, will certainly 

 be that he will be bowled over like a rabbit, and " treed," 

 sans ceremonie, at Dinas, for the following Sunday. 



The shyness of the Marten, and the persecution it has 

 endured, prompts it now to do most of its foraging under 

 cover of darkness ; but it is not, by nature, more exclusively 

 nocturnal than some of its congeners, and, especially during 

 the season of short summer nights, and when there are 



