Field Notes. 303 



MAMMALS. 

 Pine Marten.— Tt may interest Mr. Forrest and others 

 to know that when looking through the Pine Marten skins in 

 the British Museum about eighteen months ago, I found one 

 labelled ' probably Northern Norway ' (the exact locality 

 from which it came being never known with certainty, so I 

 understood). It was of a dirty- whitish coloration, and at a 

 distance of a few feet it looked like a ' white variety ' (abnormal), 

 but on careful examination the tips of some hairs were seen to 

 be brownish, and it therefore seemed to me to point to a well- 

 marked seasonal change of coloration in the locality it came from. 

 It was far paler than any other European Marten I have seen. 

 In expressing the above opinion, I should make it clear that I 

 have no idea what Mr. O. Thomas's opinion may be about its 

 coloration. A specimen of Marten which lived in the London 

 Gardens about 1904 to 1907, and which got finally named 

 Beech Marten (from Arctic Russia according to the last label 

 I saw), grew paler in its long winter coat, but whether its 

 species name was confirmed after it died by its cranial and 

 dental characters I cannot say. When it first arrived its 

 throat seemed to me to have a yellowish tinge (but it lost this 

 as it grew older), and when young it looked like a Pine. It was 

 bolder than most Beech Martens ; not so shv. Pine Martens 

 from North of England, exhibited in London, grew rather paler 

 in the throat at the beginning of winter, but as only two were 

 kept under observation regularly, I cannot sa\^ whether this 

 applies to British specimens as a whole. I am inchned to think 

 a mammal I saw in a wood near here in the spring of 1912 was 

 a Marten (Pine), but as it disappeared quickly am not certain, 

 but its run was similar. — Fred. D. Welch, M.R.C.S Hartley 

 Kent. 



We have received the following letter from Mr. Johnson Wilkinson, of 

 the Yorkshire Wild Birds and Eggs Protection Committee ; — ' In reply 

 to the remarks in your " Notes and Comments " for August, on the des- 

 truction of Sea Birds' Eggs on Bempton Cliffs, notice was at once taken 

 in the matter with the result that the Commanding Officer of the district 

 went thoroughly into the question and finds that no Officer of the Hornsea 

 Seaplane Station was guilty of doing such an insane thing. There are other 

 units with machine guns fitted to their aeroplanes. The shooting will not 

 occur again. Since writing we find the culprit was not an Englishman.' 



Mary Hungerford writes to one of the London dailies, in the hope that 

 her letter will help the cuckoo ' to retrieve his character of a callous 

 parent,' though we fancy ' the tiniest thing in baby birds ' was anything 

 but a child affectionately following its papa. She says : — ' As I was sit- 

 ting quietly [!] in a garden I saw one flying from tree top to tree top with 



the tiniest thing in baby birds "in tow," the two flying a few inches apart 



baby doing its best with its tinj' wings to keep pace with father. The 

 parent bird was cuckooing wildly as it ffew, and it also made a hissing noise 

 which no doubt is the correct baby language used in cuckoo-land. I was 

 very interested in the parental devotion shown by this much-libelled bird.' 



1018 Sept. 1. 



