236 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
almost the only one in which the two animals are met 
with intermixed, and the most western habitat of the 
true Sable. The distinctive marks of the latter are 
made to consist in its somewhat larger size; a slight 
depression of the top of its head; a trifling elongation 
of its muzzle; the fur of the ears being on the outside 
excessively soft, pale, and silky, and their mside being 
lined with whitish hairs; the soles of the feet more 
villous ; the toes not ending in a naked callus, but in a 
tuft of crisp wool completely enveloping the claws; the 
tail shorter than the legs when extended, and conse- 
quently much more abbreviated than in the Marten, 
and becoming perfectly black towards the tip; the 
blackness of the fur of the body, which in the Marten 
had a yellowish tinge; and the ashy gray of the head, 
becoming brown on the muzzle, hoary about the eyes, 
and of a more obscure and dirty colour on the throat, 
but not abruptly, except in certain varieties, distin- 
euished, like the Marten, by a patch on the throat. 
Some of these characters, it will be seen, are very trivial, 
and others susceptible of variation. The shght ditter- 
ences in the form of the head are not greater than are 
found to exist in the same animal at different ages ; 
and the colour, as we have seen from Gmelin’s descrip- 
tion, varies greatly in different mdividuals and in dif- 
ferent seasons. The woolliness of the toes, supposed to 
be peculiar to the Sable, had already been mentioned 
by Pennant in his description of the Marten, in some 
specimens of which we have ourselves observed the 
same fact. And lastly, even the comparative length of 
tail, on which the greatest stress is laid, affords no 
absolute criterion; for Pallas himself states that this 
organ is a little longer in the males, at least when 
young. His authority must, however, be allowed to 
overweigh all such considerations ; and to indicate the 
