THE MARTEN IN IRELAND. 135 



the animal has not occurred recently. Taking the eastern counties 

 from north to south, the Editor's own notes establish its occur- 

 rence more than once in Antrim in 1893, while in Down, again 

 (quoting from the same article), "amidst the wild and broken 

 ground of the Mourne Mountains .... the Marten will probably 

 for some time yet to come defy the efforts of its would-be 

 exterminators." From Louth and Meath I have no records by 

 me, but there is little doubt that stragglers are still occasionally 

 found in those counties, since they lie quite close to more favoured 

 counties. From the small county of Dublin there is no recent 

 record, but the outer parts of the county are not so far from the 

 woods of Wicklow, which are still one of the strongholds of the 

 Marten; and even in Wexford, "the model county" of Ireland, 

 its occurrence has been noted as late as June, 1892 (p. 104), a 

 fact which is not at all surprising when we consider that Wexford 

 comes next to Kilkenny, a county in some parts of which the 

 Marten is still plentiful. 



I 'regret very much that I have not got by me all the notes 

 which I have been able to collect on the distribution of the Marten 

 in Ireland, but I propose to give such of them as I have, and 

 which are not included in the last number of ' The Zoologist,* 

 under the headings of their respective counties and in the order 

 there adopted. I think it is a pity that the Editor should have 

 arranged his information under " provinces." It would have been 

 surely better to have followed some definite order, such as that 

 given in Mr. A. G. More's ■ Cybele Hibernica,' and to have dis- 

 regarded the provinces altogether. 



ULSTEK. 



Co. Donegal. — Mr. W. A. Hamilton, of Coolmore, Bally- 

 shannon, writes (under date of Feb. 18th, 1892), " The Marten is, 

 I should say, extinct here, but used to exist some twenty years 

 ago." Mr. A. R. Wallace told me (in 1892) that he saw a Marten, 

 about ten years previously, on the carriage-drive at Lougheask, 

 near Donegal (vide infra, the Rev. C. Irvine's notes for Co. 

 Fermanagh). 



Co. Antrim.— The sex and length of the Portglenore specimen 

 were stated to be " male : 2 feet 9 inches," by a correspondent who 

 wrote in ' Land and Water ' (April 22nd, 1893), under the signature 

 "J. A. B." 



