10 FELID.E. 



County of Cork Youghal (Dr. R. Ball) ; Barry's Court ;~woods 



near Bandon ; Dunmanaway, &c. (Dr. 

 Harvey in Cork Fauna.) 

 — Kerry .... Common in this county, especially at the Lakes 

 of Killarney. 



" In the reign of Charles I., we find the Lord-deputy Strafford writing from 

 Dublin to Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, regarding some martens' skins: — 

 ' Before Christmas your Lordship shall have all the marten skins I can get, either 

 for love or money ; yet not to the number I intended.' . . . ' As the woods do 

 decay, so do the hawks and martens of this kingdom.' . . . ' A good one of 

 them is as much worth as a wether.' " * 



The following anecdote was communicated to me by Mr. Edward Benn, 

 in September, 1840: — A shoemaker at Cushendall got a young marten, 

 which he partially tamed until it grew up. It then fled from him, but 

 afterwards returned to the house in the evenings, and concealed itself, in 

 order to catch the fowls which the cottagers were in the habit of housing 

 at night. The culprit was caught by a man under his bed, but again 

 made its escape, and, having become very troublesome, it was ultimately 

 killed. The same gentleman informed me that in GlenarifF the marten 

 is supposed to eat nuts, cracking them on the tree, and leaving a part of 

 the shell behind, and that he had knoMn an instance of an imprisoned 

 marten (jnaicinfi a hole through a shop-door in ITercides Street, Belfast, 

 and thus obtaining its liberty. Mr. Wm. Berry, formerly gamekeeper at 

 Donard Lodge, informed me, in August, 1851, that, Avithin his recollec- 

 tion, a farmer in that neighbourhood had fourteen out of twenty-one 

 lambs killed in one night, and that the destroyers had contented them- 

 selves with sucking the blood of their victims. On the following night 

 the remaining seven were similarly treated, and a couple of martens were 

 seen taking their departure from the scene of devastation. Their domicile 

 was soon afterwards found in a magpie's nest, at ToUymore Park. 



Dr. Scouler has brought together the following notes upon this and the 

 allied species, in the Journal of the Geological Society of Dublin 

 (1837):— 



" Martens. — Under this head I shall include the different vermiform carnivorce, 

 which are natives of Ireland. It appears that Ireland still possesses all the spe- 

 cies of this group, which are natives of England, and, consequently, that none of 

 them has been extirpated ; but they are now much less abundant than formerly, 

 as will appear from the following quotations : — Even so late as the sixteenth 

 century, martens' skins appear to have been an article of commerce in the pro- 

 vince of Ulster. Peter Lombard, in his work entitled De Regno Hibernice Insula 

 Sanctorum, after mentioning the wild boar and the wolf as common in Ulster, 

 has the following observations : — ' Praccipue tnartes, quorum pelles ])lurimzi)n 

 estimantur, et in universum in animaliuni magna pars est sita devetiarum hujus 

 regionis.' t At a subsequent period, when the forest begun to be cut down, and 

 agriculture was more attended to, the marten tribe was regarded as vermin, and 

 various laws were enacted to encourage their destruction." 



We require proof of our possessing all the English species. [ Viile the 

 foregoing observations on the polecat and weasel.] 



In the Annals of Nat. Hist. vol. iv. p. 139, will be found a " notice of 

 an uncommonly tame and sensible pine marten ; " and the species is well 

 described in the "Journal of a Naturalist," p. 129. 



* Lame Literary and Agricultural Journal for February, 1839. 

 i Peter Lombard was born in Ireland in 1560; died at Rome, 1625. 



