MAMMALIA 1 7 



Order GA RNI VORA . Earn. M U ST ELI DAI 



PINE MARTEN. 



Martes sylvestris, Nilss. 



Although the 'Mart' has long enjoyed a pleasant reputation 

 among the sportsmen of the Lake mountains, it fell to the lot 

 of a stranger to be the first to record the existence of this 

 animal in Westmorland. John Manwood gave his account of 

 the matter in the year 1598: ' The Marterne, or Martron, as 

 some old Foresters, or Woodmen, do call them, being the fowerth 

 beast of chase, whereof we have no great store in these forests 

 on this side Trent, but yet in the County of Westmerland in 

 Martendale there are many.' 1 The district thus indicated is 

 appropriately named ; not that ' Marts ' are more numerous in 

 that dale than in others, but because it is situated in the centre 

 of the region across which this mountainous species chiefly 

 roams. Outlying ' Marts ' are killed from time to time on the 

 skirts of our faunal area. • A keeper named Solomon killed a 

 'Mart' in Barron Wood in 1880, and sent it to James Fell, at 

 whose house I examined it some few years afterwards. Mr. 

 Lindsay was once sent for to kill a ' Mart ' which had worried a 

 sheep near Broughton; he also killed the only 'Mart' ever known 

 to have visited Blackcombe, about the year 1847. Clements of 

 Tebay showed me a fine specimen killed in 1889, remarking 

 that he thought it must be ' the last of the Westmorland Sweet 

 Marts.' This Marten had at some previous period lost one of 

 its feet in a trap. It was killed in a very unromantic way, for, 

 having found its way into a barn, it was worried by the farmer's 

 cur-dog. Other instances might be cited to show that Martens 

 occasionally appear on low grounds, on mosses, and in woods 

 at a distance from their usual haunts ; but they happen very 

 seldom. Mr. J. A. Llarvie-Brown once wrote of the Marten as 

 'not uncommon in the east of Cumberland.' 2 I am not aware 

 that any specimen of the Marten has ever been heard of, far less 

 taken, in that part of Lakeland to which Mr. Harvie-Brown 

 referred, though Thomas Knox trapped a stray Marten on 



1 A Treatise of the Forrest Lawes, p. 26. 



2 Zoologist, 1881, p. 162. 



B 



