OCCASIONAL NOTES. 333 
(and may be, then, our forests also) that the Bear frequenting them may 
have been an unknown animal to the people of extreme West Cornwall, who 
alone ever spoke the pure Cornish tongue until an invading (may be friendly) 
force brought them the news of the existence of the animal, and named it. 
I do not suppose that this theory of mine would, if supported by proof, bring 
the existence of the Bear in Cornwall much later than the third century of 
the Christian era; but it is supported by facts enough to show that an 
animal named with the equivalent of the modern word “ Bear” was known 
in Cornwall within historic times. There is a local tradition prevalent in 
this district that very early in the eighteenth century an old dog-wolf 
infested a rocky hill called Trencrom, about six miles from Penzance; that, 
after many hunts, he was one day chased thence to a thicket close by the 
railway on the north side east of Marazion Station, and now known as 
Darlington Burrows, and there killed; and that this was the last Wolf 
killed in Cornwall. I do not put much reliance on the date of the tradition, 
but I suppose that the existence of it shows that Wolves were extant in 
Cornwall to within a recent historical period. It it unsafe to rely on the 
word “Wolf” occurring in names of places as indicating the former 
existence of the animal in places so named. The Wolf Rock on which the 
lighthouse is built, nine miles out at sea off the Land’s End, can have no 
connection whatever with the animal “ Wolf,” but has a direct and distinct 
connection with the name of some hardy Norseman, “ Olaff,” who was once 
lost there, or who perhaps may have discovered it.—Tuomas Cornis 
(Penzance). 
On tHe Youne or tHE Pine Marren.—l received two young Pine 
Martens from Cumberland on June 18th, and think the following points 
are worth recording. They were said to have been caught by a shepherd 
“in a brossen-rock” (of which word I should be glad to receive an 
explanation). “The shepherd's dog found them, and he got them out of the 
erevice of the rock with his stick.” There were only these two in the litter. 
With the exception of Bell (1st and 2nd edit.), who says, ‘‘ The number of 
young ones at a birth is stated to be usually but two or three,” the 
minimum, according to the few authors I have consulted who give numbers, 
is variously stated as three or four, while the maximum ranges between four 
and eight! In ‘The Zoologist’ for 1879 Mr. C. A. Parker, writing of 
Cumberland, says (p. 171) the young “are born about the end of April or 
beginning of May, and are two or three (never more) in number”; and 
again (p. 264), ‘on April 12th a female Marten was killed. . . . and two 
young ones found, still blind, one being considerably larger than the other.” 
On July 2nd I measured one of my cubs (there is no perceptible difference 
between the size of the two), with the following result, which is about as 
accurate as it is practicable to get with a wriggling, fidgetting live animal :— 
