Like the Pine Marten, it is a good climber, but, unlike it, shows a partiality, not for the driest parts of the wood, but for the neighbourhood of water. Its chief food seems to be Mice, but it is also fond of stealing the fish used to bait traps--whence it is often called the Fisher--and Sir J. Richardson states that its favourite meal is the Canadian Porcupine, which it kills by a bite on its unprotected belly, and eats, notwithstanding the quills. Sometimes it is forced, by want of better food, to eat beech-nuts. THE SABLE.[168] This is another species of the same genus, important from the fact that it is the most valuable of the fur-producing animals. Its skin seems to have been even more precious in former times than now. A writer in the sixteenth century states that “forty of the best quality, which is the quantity usually packed in one bale, have been sold for more than a thousand pieces of gold.” The Sable is found in the northern parts of Asia, being especially abundant between the Lena and Kamstchatka. It differs markedly from the true Martens in the form of its head, which is conical, the apex of the cone being formed by the pointed snout, while from its base project the pointed, and, for a _Mustela_, large ears. The legs and feet, too, are larger and stronger than in the other species of this genus. Sable-hunting is, naturally, a very important branch of industry, and forms the chief occupation of many of the Siberian tribes. The work is by no means an easy one; it entails miles of travelling in dark woods and through heavy snow-storms; the track of the Sables may have to be followed for long distances; and numerous traps must be skilfully set and visited daily. With all his trouble, the hunter often finds that “an Arctic Fox, or some other Carnivore, has eaten up the costly booty, leaving only a few fragments, as if for the express purpose of showing him how narrowly he has escaped earning forty, fifty, or sixty silver roubles.”