10 
FELIDAE. 
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.’ ... 4 As the woods do 
decay, so do the hawks and martens of this kingdom.’ ... 4 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, ’Ifnd leaving a part of 
the shell behind, and that he had known an instance of an imprisoned 
marten gnawing a hole through a shop-door in Hercules Street, Belfast, 
and thus obtaining its liberty. Mr. Wm. Berry, formerly gamekeeper at 
Donard Lodge, informed me, in August, 1851, that, within 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 Tollymore 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 carnivorae, 
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 : — 4 Praecipue martes, quorum pelles plurimum 
estimantur , et in universum in animalium magna pars est sita devetiarum hujus 
regionis.’ f 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. [Vide the 
foregoing observations on the polecat and weasel.] 
In the Annals of Nat. Hist. vol. iv. p. 139, will be found a 44 notice of 
an uncommonly tame and sensible pine marten ; ” and the species is well 
described in the 44 Journal of a Naturalist,” p. 129. 
'* Larne Literary and Agricultural Journal for February, 1839. 
f Peter Lombard was born in Ireland in 1560 ; died at Rome, 1625. 
