PINE MARTEN. 63 



an Otter does so), sometimes five or six or ten miles in a 

 night." 



More recently Pennant says he saw an Otter in the kitchen 

 of the Carthusian monastery near Dijon, being prepared for 

 dinner. 



There have been many cases of tame Otters who hunted 

 streams for fish for the benefit of their owner, to whom they 

 return on hearing a whistle or other signal. Some years ago an 

 interesting account appeared in The Field of an Otter whelp 

 that had been mothered by an Otter-hound, afterwards hunting 

 its own kind with the pack. 



Pine Marten (Mustela martes, Linn.). 



The Pine Marten or Marten Cat was formerly quite a common 

 woodland beast, but owing to the onslaughts of the gamekeeper 

 and the high prices paid for a skin, it is now, so far as southern 

 and midland England is concerned, extinct. In the wilder 

 parts of the Peak district, the North of England, Wales, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland, however, it still exists, though in small and 

 ever decreasing numbers in most places. In the Lake District 

 it was quite recently reported to be fairly common even. The 

 name Pine-Marten is a misnomer in so far as it indicates that 

 the animal is at all restricted to pine- woods ; and it is probable 

 that in the past it led to confusion, for in all the natural histories 

 published up to a late date in the nineteenth century, Britain was 

 credited with an additional species, the Beech Marten (Mustela 

 foina). The two species are much alike, and the practice 

 appears to have been to record those found in pine-woods as 

 M. martes and those in other woods as M. foina ! Bell, indeed, 

 though he expressly states his disbelief in our possession of two 

 species of Marten, refers to the white-throated form as the 

 Beech Marten or Common Marten and says it is more frequently 

 met with than the yellow-throated form or Pine Marten. The 



