232 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
dus, and Jonston. They seem, however, by common 
consent, to have abandoned Agricola's subdivision of 
the second species, and to have described his first, the 
Stone Marten, as it was emphatically denominated by 
the Germans, as the Beech Marten, imputing to it a 
more familiar and sociable disposition and a fondness 
for the neighbourhood of inhabited places. The same 
distinctions are adopted by Ray in his Synopsis Qua- 
drupedum, 1693 ; but to his description of the Sable 
he adds, that " Dr. Tancred Robinson had seen the 
animal itself in the possession of Dr. Charlton. Its 
size was that of a cat of Cyprus, its colour a dark 
tawny ; the fore part of its head and its ears of a 
whitish ash-colour ; and the bristles on its eyebrows, 
nose, and face, very long." 
So lightly did Linnseus estimate the value of the 
distinctions indicated between the Pine and Beech 
Martens, that he uniformly treats of them as one and 
the same animal, in all his zoological writings from 
the first edition of his Fauna Suecica to the twelfth 
of his Systema Naturse. It is only in the last that he 
gives for the first time an intimation of the existence 
of any difference between them. " The country people," 
he there says, " reckon two varieties ; the Beech Mar- 
ten with a white throat, and the Pine Marten with a 
yellow." From the manner in which this observation 
is introduced it is evident that he gave little credence 
to the popular opinion. His character of the Sable is 
principally founded upon that of Ray, and is accom- 
panied by the sign which he constantly used for the 
purpose of denoting that he had himself never seen 
the animal. Among his contemporaries, Klein, who in 
1751 published an arrangement of Quadrupeds, con- 
tinues the old distinction, and repeats the old descrip- 
tions, of the three species ; and Brisson, who followed 
