jgf NATURAL HISTORY. 



The American Sable (Mustela americana), often called the Marten, is a closely allied species. It 

 attains a length of eighteen inches, not including the tail, which measures about a foot more. Its 

 capture gives the American trapper his staple occupation. It " is ordinarily captured in wooden traps 

 of very simple construction made on the spot. The traps are a little enclosure of stakes or brush, in 

 which the bait is placed upon a trigger, with a short upright stick, supporting a log of wood. The 

 animal is shut off from the bait in any but the desired direction, and the log falls upon its victim with 

 the slightest disturbance. A line of such traps, several to the mile, often extends many miles. The 

 bait is any kind of meat, squirrel, piece of flesh, or bird's head. One of the greatest obstacles that 

 the Sable-hunter has to contend with in many localities is the persistent destruction of his traps by the 

 Wolverene and Pekan. ... I have accounts from Hudson's Bay trappers of a Sable road fifty 



miles long, containing 150 traps, every one of which was destroyed through the whole line twice once 

 by a Wolf, once by a Wolverene. When thirty miles of the same road were given up, the 

 remaining forty traps were broken five or six times in succession by the latter animal."* 



THE COMMON WEASEL, f 



The Weasel, like the remaining members of the genus Putvrius, are very often called " vermiform," 

 and a better name could scarcely be applied to them, for anything more worm-like could hardly be 

 imagined in a hairy quadruped. The legs are extremely short in relation to the body, which is atten- 

 uated in the highest degree, and almost regularly cylindrical from one end to the other. Then the 

 neck is of most disproportionate length, and carries the head out so far, that the fore legs appear as 



* Coues. 

 the Marten'^ W ^ 



The Weasel is Vei 7 commonly referred to the genus Mustela, but this name properly belongs to 



