Hunting the Marten with Foxhounds. 197 



you much information about marten- cats/ as we 

 have not seen or heard of one in this county for the 

 last eighteen or twenty years. Before that time they 

 were always to be found in particular localities, away 

 from keepers and preserves ; and my uncle (who hunted 

 the L hounds for forty seasons) used to hunt marten- 

 cats very early in the season with the young hounds, and 

 a few old ones, to teach them to ' pack ' well. The scent 

 of a marten-cat is so strong that it is hardly possible for 

 hounds to lose it, and my uncle used to say that it drew 

 them together and taught them to pack well, so that 

 when they began fox-hunting later on it almost saved the 

 expense of an extra whip. Foxes were so scarce in those 

 days that we could not afford to go cub-hunting in the 

 early part of the season, or we should have had many 

 " blank " days before the end. Of course, now that foxes 

 are more plentiful, young hounds can be entered to the 

 legitimate scent at the beginning. We used to find the 

 marten-cats in large coverts, and it was a common occur- 

 rence for one to give the hounds a run of three or four 

 hours in a thick cover, the animal every now and then 

 taking to a tree. From this it would be dislodged by 

 some one climbing up to it, when it would run along a 

 bough to the outside end, then drop into the cover, and 

 away again, although perhaps twenty couple of hounds 

 might be baying at it under the tree. I have seen one 

 ' treed ' at least a dozen times before it was killed." 



I question the correctness of my friend's conjecture as* 

 to the marten being extinct in the shire of which he 

 speaks. Indeed, I have evidence of its existence in that 

 county, though not in his neighbourhood. In my own, I 

 am happy to say, it is far from being extinct, many 

 recent cases of its capture having come to my knowledge. 



