THE MARTENS, POLECATS, AND WEASELS 643 



Although generally silent, in the pairing season, which takes cplace toward the 

 end of February (or about three weeks later than that of the pine-marten), these 

 animals utter a kind of mewing sound not unlike that of a cat, and a pair of them 

 in a tree may be heard for a considerable distance. 



In general the fur of this species is less valued than that of the pine-marten ; 

 but some skins from Afghanistan and Turkestan have beautiful fur, with long, 

 glossy, nearly black piles, and very soft white or pale ashy under-fur. These 

 Turkestan martens were at one time regarded a? belonging to a distinct species. 

 The inferiority of the fur of the ordinary beech-marten, as compared with that of 

 the sable, is due not only to its color and actual length, but likewise to the relative 

 length of the long piles as compared with that of the under-fur, which is scarcely 

 concealed by them. The more northern skins are always superior to those from 

 Southern Europe ; and a large number are exported to England and sold as 

 an inferior kind of sable. As already mentioned, it was considered by the late 

 Professor Rolleston that the domesticated animal employed by the ancient Greeks 

 for the purposes for which we now use the cat, and called by them the Ailouros, 

 was this marten, which is often spoken of as the white-breasted marten. Fossil re- 

 mains of martens occur in the cavern deposits of the Continent, but only those of 

 the pine-marten have as yet been found in England. 



The sable (M. zibellina) is so nearly allied to the pine-marten that 

 some writers have considered that it should be regarded merely as a 

 variety distinguished by the greater length and fineness of the fur. Brehm states, 

 however, that it has a much more distinctly cone-shaped head, larger ears, longer 

 and stouter limbs, and proportionately-larger feet. In the most highly-esteemed 

 specimens the fur should be thick, soft, and nearly uniformly colored. Such skins 

 are blackish above, having a mixture of black and gray on the snout, gray on the 

 cheeks, chestnut brown on the neck and flanks, and orange yellow, or sometimes 

 reddish orange on the throat. The margins of the ears are either grayish white or 

 light brown in color. In a number of cases there is a larger or smaller admixture 

 of white hairs among the dark fur of the back, while the muzzle, cheeks, breast, 

 and under parts are white. In other specimens the fur on the back is yellowish 

 brown, while that of the under parts is nearly white, and only the legs black. 

 Good skins should exhibit a kind of " watering," owing to the reddish tint of the 

 woolly under-fur showing through the long outer hairs. An average sable will 

 measure about twenty inches from the snout to the root of the tail ; the length of 

 the tail being seven inches. The skins are valued only when they have their winter 

 fur, the summer coat being much shorter. In spring, although the winter fur may 

 still be retained, the skins are quite useless, as the hair will drop off even after the 

 skins have been dressed. 



The range of the sable originally extended from the Ural mountains 

 to Behring Sea, and from the mountains on the southern borders of 

 Siberia to the 68th parallel of north latitude. It is, however, now much curtailed, 

 owing to the incessant persecution to which the animal has been so long subject; 

 and the chief haunts are now in the mountain forests of Northern Asia, more espe- 

 cially Eastern Siberia and Kamchatka. 



