THE ERMINE THE SABLE. 131 



and the body of a much darker brown than that of the former. 

 The fur of the pine weasel is also superior in fineness, beauty, 

 and value. 



THE ERMINE, OR STOAT. 



This animal being brown in the summer, is called the stoat. 

 In the winter it becomes perfectly white, except the end of the 

 tail, which is black, and invariably retains that colour. In this 

 season it acquires the name of the ermine, arid its fur is very 

 valuable. It abounds in Norway, Lapland, Russia, and Siberia, 

 and is also very common in Kamtschatka. In that country and 

 Siberia, it is generally taken in traps, baited with flesh. The skins 

 of the ermine are sold, in those countries, from two to three 

 pounds sterling per hundred. 



The natural history of this animal is nearly the same as that 

 of the weasel. Its food is the same, and it also possesses an 

 equal degree of agility. The ermine begins to change colour 

 in November, and in March it resumes its summer vesture. 



THE SABLE 



Is, of all the animals of the weasel kind, the most highly es- 

 teemed, and its fur is the most admired ; a single skin, although 

 not more than four inches broad, being sometimes sold for fif- 

 . teen pounds, a circumstance which would be incredible, were it 

 not attested by writers, who possessed every means of informa- 

 tion on the subject. The fur of the sable possesses this pecu- 

 liarity, that whatever way it is stroked it lies equally smooth, 

 whereas all others, when stroked contrary to the grain, give a 

 sensation of roughness : its colour is a blackish brown, and the 

 darkest are the most admired. 



The sable resembles the martin in form, and nearly in size. It 

 seems to be particularly fond of the shade, and inhabits the most 

 impervious woods, where it lives in holes in the earth by the 

 banks of rivers, or under the roots of trees : it possesses great 

 agility, and bounds with velocity from tree to tree. From the 

 singular closeness of its fur, which is extremely well calculated 

 for resisting the water ; and from being frequently found in small 

 islands, it is supposed by many naturalists to be amphibious. 



This small, but valuable quadruped, is a native of Siberia, 

 Kamtschatka, and the islands which lie between that country 

 and Japan ; but scarcely any are found in European Russia, and 

 still fewer in Lapland. Siberia, however, is the country where 

 it most abounds, and which furnishes the greatest part of those 

 valuable furs which constitute so lucrative a branch of Russian 

 commerce. It is therefore in the immense forests of those deso- 

 late regions, that the business of sable-hunting is chiefly carried 



