MARTEN, the name of several fur-bearing animals of the weasel family (Mustelidee) that are mainly arboreal in habits, and do not change their color to white in winter. All inhabit the cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The beech or stone marten (Mustela foina) is to be found in Europe generally south of the Baltic, although not now a native of Britain. It is about 17 inches long in body, and its tail adds nine inches; its breast is white. It is tractable, and is believed by some to be the animal domes ticated by the ancient Greeks as a mouser. The pine, or sweet, marten (M. mattes) is rather smaller, but with a much longer tail, propor tionally, and is more northerly in its distribu tion, occurring from the British Isles and Nor way eastward to Siberia. It has a finer, more valuable fur than the other, and a yellow throat. Very nearly allied to it in size, form and color is the Siberian sable-marten (M. sibellina), noted as furnishing in its coat the finest and most expensive of the furs from animals of this group. The demand for this fur can be met only by the most difficult, and often dan gerous, exertion in trapping and hunting in re mote Asiatic forests; and it has resulted in a steady diminution of the supply and very high prices for the pelts. There is also a native marten in India and another in Japan. North America has two species of the genus — the American pine-marten, or Canadian sable (M. americana), and the pekan (M. pennanti). The former is hardly distinguishable from the sable of the Old World, and its fur, although re garded as somewhat inferior, is largely used as a substitute for genuine Siberian sable. (See FUR-TRADE). The pekan is very distinct by its greater size (length, 24 inches, plus tail, 13 inches), its long and very dark coat and its dog-like head. Its fur is of great value.
The body in all these martens is elongated and supple, with a long and somewhat bushy tail; the legs short and the toes separate and flexible, with long sharp claws adapted to the life in trees that most of them follow. They are fierce and cunning hunters, pouncing suc cessfully on all sorts of small animals and birds, destroying birds' nets, catching frogs, and in winter pursuing and killing animals as large as hares and porcupines. The pekan, or
fisher, is especially bold and voracious, but does not eat fishes in spite of its name. Both the American species were formerly common in the mountainous parts of the eastern United States, hut are now restricted to the remoter woods of Canada. They make their dens, bedded with leaves and grass, in some high hollow of a tree-trunk, as a rule, but frequently choose a crevice among rocks, and there pro duce annually a litter of from one to seven young. The period of gestation is about three months, and the young begin to leave the nest when two months old.
Breeding for These bloodthirsty little carnivores are the very type of savagery, and even the kittens are almost untamable. The high value of their fur (about 75,000 pelts of the sable, and 100,000 of the Canadian marten represented the market-supply just before the Great War) has caused much effort to be ex pended, especially in Canada, to breed them in confinement, but thus far the results have been small, although encouraging. The general treat ment and food seem to be like that for minks. A large pen made of inch-mesh wire and floored with this, or in some way so prepared that the animal cannot dig out, should contain stumps and bushes to give the marten accustomed exer cise. Two males cannot be put together. When the female is ready for a mate she is placed in his cage, or vice-versa, and the mating will take place at night, so that the pair must usually be left together several days. Mating occurs naturally in January or February. When the young are about two months old they may be removed from the mother, and should be brought up by hand, if possible, so as to be come more gentle. These general directions ap ply to the pekan, but his quarters should be larger than for the sable.
Consult, besides general natural histories, Cones, 'Fur-bearing Animals' (Washington 1877) ; Ingersoll, (Life of Mammals' (New York 1909) ; Seton, (Northern Mammals' (New York 1909) ; Jones, (Fur-Farming in Canada' (Montreal 1913).