152 THE PINE-MARTEN. 



bonds and some sense of tenderness on the father's 

 part towards the young. 



Seton says that after the young are born, the 

 less they see of their cut-throat sire the better. 

 He also says that no two martens have ever been 

 known to meet with feelings other than those of 

 deadly enmity. It is probable, then, that the 

 ' mated ' couples run together only for a short 

 time, and that thereafter, though their respective 

 home-ranges may not be far apart, they do not 

 associate as mated couples. This would account 

 for their distribution being usually in pairs, while 

 at the same time supporting the probable fact 

 that a marten is a marten the world over, whether 

 caged or free. 



Wild British martens kept in captivity behave 

 in just the same way as do those on the fur- 

 farms in Canada. The big cage system, in which 

 a number of martens are allowed to run together 

 in a large confined space, has never yet proved 

 possible. This is owing to the fact that the 

 member of the clan who is strong enough to kill 

 all the rest cheerfully proceeds to do so or, rather, 

 he kills the survivors of the general melee with 

 which the social intercourse begins. In this way 

 a cage of promising martens has been reduced 

 to one tattered and moth-eaten specimen when 

 the man came next morning with food for a 

 dozen a somewhat expensive process, by which, 

 nevertheless, a very fit strain can speedily be 

 arrived at ! 



Thus fur-farmers, having found that the big 

 cage system merely resulted in providing amuse- 

 ment for one solitary specimen, soon tried the 

 separate cage method, which is to-day yielding 

 good results. Marten -farming, however, is not 



