146 THE PINE-MARTEN. 



wild marten, hunting for its living and with all 

 the great woods at its disposal, would hardly prove 

 a sluggard. 



The only wild marten I have been fortunate 

 enough to see in a natural state lived in some 

 low crags in the heart of a beech-wood in a 

 secluded West Riding valley. I saw it on two 

 occasions, and each time its behaviour was 

 identical. As I silently approached the foot of 

 the crags it darted from a cranny somewhere 

 among the heather and ferns at the brow of the 

 cliff, and ran up the slanting trunk of a blasted 

 mountain-ash growing from a shelf. Here it 

 crouched, tilting its head first on one side, then 

 on the other, as it regarded me with an air of 

 playful innocence. One could not but be struck 

 by its exquisite beauty a picture, indeed, amidst 

 its rugged setting ; yet in those bright eyes was a 

 hint, the merest hint, of the devilish brain which 

 commanded that death-darting body. After a 

 few seconds of closest scrutiny it descended the 

 trunk a little, as though to obtain a better view ; 

 then, like a flash, it was gone. 



This was the only specimen I ever knew to 

 exist in the secluded dales of the West Riding, 

 and the marten seems now to have departed even 

 from the wilds of Wigtownshire and Kirkcud- 

 brightshire. Seton, however, in dealing with the 

 Canadian species, comments specially on the 

 marten's powers of avoiding detection. While in 

 northern Ontario we used regularly to take 

 marten in steel traps and dead-falls, but I have 

 never seen a wild one in those woods ; neither have 

 I met any white man who has. I remember 

 a correspondence in Rod and Gun in Canada 

 some years ago, following an article the writer of 



