THE STORY OF THE MARTEN. 
4G9 
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 20 inches from the snout to the root of the tail; the length of the tail 
being 7 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 Si¬ 
beria to the 68th parallel of north latitude. It is, however, now much cur¬ 
tailed, owing to the incessant persecution to which the animal has been so 
long subject; and the chief haunts are now the mountain forests of North 
Asia, more especially Eastern Siberia and Kamschatka. 
Sables are for the most part of nocturnal habits, and, though they occa¬ 
sionally feed by day, generally spend that period of the twenty-four hours 
in holes at the roots or in the trunks of trees. They dislike the presence 
of man, and are rarely to be found in the neighborhood of the villages; 
their favorite resort being the depths of the forest least frequented by the 
natives. It is considered that the most inaccessible and least known parts of 
the country are the best hunting grounds. They live on hares, birds of all 
kinds, and, in short, almost every living thing they can kill, but they are also 
said to eat berries, and even fish. There are, indeed, but few animals, ap¬ 
parently, which do not live on fish in Kamschatka. They have only one litter 
during the year, generally in the month of April, and bring forth four or 
five young at a birth in a nest in the holes of trees. Formerly a large num¬ 
ber of sables were caught in traps in Kamschatka, but they are now more 
generally hunted there with dogs; these dogs being specially trained for 
the purpose, and either running down their quarry on the deep snow, 
driving them into trees, or smelling them out when lying asleep in holes. 
The great object in such hunts is to “tree” the sable, when the tree is sur¬ 
rounded with nets, and the animal either shaken from the boughs or 
knocked off them by means of poles. If the sable does not fall into the nets, 
it is again pursued by the expectant dogs, by whom it is either run down, 
or once more “treed.” When the tree is too high to allow of the sable being 
dislodged by the usual methods, it is either felled, or the animal is shot; but 
recourse to guns is if possible avoided, as the shot does damage to the 
skins. If the distance they have to travel be a long one, the Kamschatkan 
