The root is the best part, and, if carefully dried, may be kept a long time. These mucilaginous drinks are useful when the bowels or bladder are inflamed or irritated by strong physic, or when there is any pain in the urinary passages. They should be given frequently in the course of the day, and may occasionally be made the vehicle for more active medicines. Any thing which contains mucilage in sufficient quantity may be employed for the purpose of making emollient drinks.—White.
Marshy, a. Foggy, fenny, swampy; produced in marshes.
Marten, s. A large kind of weasel, whose fur is much valued; a kind of swallow that builds in houses, a martlet.
This is the most beautiful, and the most destructive to pheasants, of the British beasts of prey. The marten is about eighteen inches long, the tail ten, or, if measured to the end of the hair at the point, where it is also the thickest and darkest, twelve inches; the head is small, and elegantly shaped: the eyes are lively, and all its motions agile and graceful; the ears are broad, rounded and open; the back, sides, and tail, are covered with a fine thick ash-coloured down at bottom, with long hair intermixed, of a bright chestnut, tipped with black, giving a darkish brown appearance to the whole; the head brown, with a slight cast of red; the legs and upper side of the feet, chocolate—the under sides are covered with similar thick down, to the body; the feet are broad; the claws white, large, and sharp, but incapable of being, at pleasure, sheathed or dilated; they are well suited for climbing trees, in which, in this country, it constantly resides: the throat and breast are white; belly of the same colour with the back, except being rather paler; but martens vary in their colours, inclining, more or less, to ash colour, according to their age, or the seasons of the year they are taken in.
The skin and excrements of this animal have an agreeable, musky scent, and are free from that disgusting rankness which distinguishes the other species of this genus, as the pole-cat, &c. The fur is valuable, and much used to line or trim the gowns of magistrates, aldermen, &c. The marten lives in the woods, and in winter very often shelters itself in magpies’ nests, breeds in the hollows of trees, and brings from four to six young ones at a time; they are brought forth with their eyes unopened, but quickly arrive at a state of perfection. The female has but a small quantity of milk in proportion to her size, but she amply compensates for this natural defect by bringing home eggs and live birds to her offspring, thus early habituating them to a life of carnage and plunder. As soon as the young are able to leave the nest, they are led by the dam through the woods, where the birds at once recognise their enemies, and fail not to attend them, as they do the fox, with every mark of animosity and terror. When taken young, the marten is easily tamed, is extremely playful and good-humoured; its attachment, however, is not to be relied on if it gets loose, for it will immediately take advantage of its liberty, and retire to the woods, its natural haunts. A farmer in the parish of Turling, in Essex, was famous for taming this animal, and had seldom less than two. Some years since, one used to run tame about the kitchen of the Bald-faced Stag inn, on Epping forest.
M. Buffon affirms of a marten that he had tamed (it should seem but imperfectly), that it drank frequently, sometimes slept two days successively, and at other times continued as long awake. When preparing for sleep, it folded itself round, covering its head with its tail. He describes its motions as so violent, incessant, and troublesome, that it was necessarily kept chained. After escaping from its fetters, and returning once or twice, it at last went entirely away.
The pine marten (whose skin is considered of a far superior quality to the common), which is distinguished by a yellow throat and breast, and of which such numbers are sold at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s sales—at one of which, 12,370 good skins, and 2360 damaged ones, were sold; and about the same time the French brought into the port of Rochelle, from Canada, no less than 30,325 skins—is sometimes found in Wales, in the counties of Merioneth and Carnarvon. In Scotland it is the only kind of marten; where it inhabits the fir forests, frequently usurping the drays or nests of the squirrel, building its own nest at the top of the trees, and produces seven or eight young at a birth.
The marten’s food is poultry, game, and small birds; it will not eat mice, rats, and moles, and is said to feed also on grain, and to be extremely fond of honey. It is said to be a great enemy to cats, and will even attack the wild cat, which, although much stronger, is always worsted, and often killed in the combat, and a contest is sure to take place whenever they meet.
The scent of the marten is very sweet to hounds, and it is the best animal to enter young fox-hounds at. The marten, by running to the thickest bushes it can find, teaches hounds to run cover, which is of infinite service to them. When closely pursued, it climbs a tree, and its agility is astonishing, for though it falls frequently from a tree into the midst of a pack of hounds, each intent on the catching it, the instances are very few of a marten being caught by them in that situation. They are not found in any great numbers; the most ever met with by the compiler, was in the large woods near Rayleigh, in Essex.
They attack the pheasants when at roost, and make great havoc. The steel trap, baited with a piece of pheasant or wood-pigeon, will generally be successful. Some prefer the box trap (such as is used in warrens), which should be baited with a bird in the centre, and the feathers strewed through the inside of the trap, from one end to the other; but a more certain way of catching them, in a park or cover paled in, is the following: as they constantly run the pales and posts to dry themselves in the morning, have a groove cut in some of the posts and gate-posts where they run, sufficient to contain a strong hawk or rat-trap; the trap must be set in this groove, without a bait: in leaping upon the place, they are sure to be taken. A small chain should be fixed to the trap, and fastened to the post.