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.”[169] [Illustration: SABLE.] THE COMMON WEASEL.[170] The Weasel, like the remaining members of the genus _Putorius_, 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 attenuated 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 if placed quite at the hinder end of the chest, instead of in the front of it. The head passes almost insensibly into the neck, and the neck into the body. The head is flattened, and bears little glittering savage-looking eyes, and small rounded ears. The length from snout to root of tail does not exceed eight inches. The tail is about two inches long. The fur is light reddish-brown above, and white below; in northern latitudes the brown parts assume a much lighter colour in winter, so that the Weasel undergoes a change of coat similar to, but less extensive than, that undergone by the Ermine. [Illustration: COMMON WEASEL.]