THE BRITISH HARTEN. 163 



them, and about fifteen years ago one was trapped at Henallt 

 Wood, not far distant. It is still preserved in the possession of 

 Sir Joseph Bailey. At the present time there are several stuffed 

 specimens in and near Brecon, but the last living one was seen 

 by my son in September, 1866, in a very large wood near Brecon. 

 As I have the shooting of this wood, I know it has not been 

 trapped for vermin for over twenty years. The old rough Welsh 

 hound will hunt the Marten with great keenness, and about 

 twenty-five years since two hounds belonging to my father-in-law 

 that were 'at walk' at Cefn, Carmarthenshire, midway between 

 Llandovery and Llanwrtyd, hunted a Marten by themselves and 

 killed it. I have the skin now, although it was sadly torn ; but 

 the Marten was very scarce even then ; still one would think 

 that the large coverts of scrub oak which were formerly so 

 dense in the upper part of Carmarthenshire would be exactly 

 suited to its habits. Of late years these oak woods have given 

 place to larch, but I should think it likely that there still may 

 be some about Ystraddfin and the upper parts of the Towy, 

 where what the keepers are pleased to call 'vermin' are not 

 kept down, and the same remark would apply the wilder 

 portions of the county of Eadnor. From the above it will be 

 seen that the Marten is almost, if not quite, extinct in these 

 three counties, and before the end of the century I fear it will 

 have to be classed with the Wild Boar and the Wolf which for- 

 merly existed here." 



In the neighbouring county of Glamorgan, as we learn from 

 Dillwyn's ' Materials for a Fauna of Swansea,' the Marten was 

 formerly to be met with near Swansea in Clive Wood and Neath 

 Valley, and it is recorded, in ' The Zoologist' for 1849 (p. 2440), 

 that in April of that year one was killed in the neighbourhood of 

 Newbridge. 



(To be continued.) 



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