Pine Marten 



Fishers sleep all day in hollow trees or logs, preferring a good- 

 sized cavity high up among the branches. In mild weather they 

 like to take their naps on the horizontal branches of fir-trees, 

 stretched at length, like a cat on a window-sill. 



Although hating settled regions and cultivated lands, they ex- 

 hibit no special fear of man in the wilderness, often turning the 

 tables on the trapper and following his trail, just as the trapper 

 follows theirs. Many a trapper has been driven almost to despera- 

 tion by some sly old fisher who insists on looking after his traps 

 for him, pulling marten traps to pieces from behind in order to 

 get at the bait without risking his own precious skin, eating or 

 tearing to pieces any pine-marten or mink that may have been 

 caught, and dragging steel traps out of the snow to spring them. 

 If he should chance to get pinched in a marten trap, his great 

 strength usually sets him free again, teaching him only to be a 

 little more careful the next time. 



When at last the trapper has succeeded in outwitting this wily 

 fellow-hunter, and brings his beautiful pelt back to camp, he feels 

 the thrill of triumph of a hard-won victory. 



The fisher is one of the very wildest of all wild animals, and I 

 believe that hardly another suffers so much from being caged. 

 Of course, all of the hunters are rendered infinitely miserable and 

 unhappy by being deprived of the freedom which is their life ; 

 but of all those that I have seen imprisoned, not even the pine 

 martens or lynxes looked at me with such hopeless despair as 

 the fisher, and I earnestly hope that I may never have to see 

 .another in a cage. There is cruelty enough in the woods, 

 heaven knows; but the trapper who sets his steel trap with a 

 spring pole that jerks the game into the air and keeps it hang- 

 ing by a leg through long days and nights, in all weathers, is 

 merciful by contrast with him who can be hired to catch a full- 

 grown fisher uninjured in order that it may drag out a wasted 

 life in prison for no fault of its own. 



Marten 



Mustela americana Turton 

 Called also American Sable, Pine Marten. 



Length. 24 inches. 



Description. Smaller than the fisher, with less bushy tail. Colour, 



242 



