An abundance of food may modify the preference of the mink for wooded or partly wooded country. The marshy and treeless tundra lying near sea-level in the triangle between the coast of Bering Sea, and the lower parts of the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers offers such an attractive situation differing from their usual haunts. The sluggish streams and numberless ponds abound with small fish four to five inches long. Minks swarm in this area to such an extent that the Eskimos who inhabit the district are known among the natives of the surrounding region as the “mink people.” Steel traps are used there, but a primitive method is even more successful. A wicker fence is built across a narrow stream and a small fyke fish-trap placed in it. In swimming along the stream minks pass into the trap like fish, and I knew of from 10 to 15 being thus taken in one day.
During my residence in that region from 10,000 to 15,000 mink skins were caught in this tundra district annually, and the supply appeared to be inexhaustible. With the growing occupation of the continent and the increasing demand for furs, however, the numbers of the mink must surely decrease. To forestall the shortage of furs that seems imminent, efforts are now being made to establish fur farming to replace the declining supply of wild furs with those grown under domestication. The mink appears to be well adapted to successful breeding in captivity. The main question to solve is the relation of the cost of caring for the animals to the value of its pelt in the market.
THE MARTEN, OR AMERICAN SABLE (Martes americana and its relatives)
(For illustration, [see page 555])
Wild animals possess an endless variety of mental traits which endow them in many instances with marked individualities. Few are more strongly characterized in this respect than the marten. One of the most graceful and beautiful of our forest animals, it frequents the more inaccessible parts of the wilderness and retires shyly before the inroads of the settler’s ax. Its rich brown coat, so highly prized that the pursuit of it goes on winter after winter in all the remote forests of the North, is a source of danger threatening the existence of the species. The full-grown animal weighs five or six pounds and measures nearly three feet in length.
The martens are circumpolar in distribution, and the several species occupy northern lands from England, Europe, and northern Asia to North America. Of the Old World species, the Siberian sable is best known on account of the beauty of its fine, rich fur, which renders it the most valued of all in the fur markets of the world.
The North American marten is a close relative of the Siberian species, and occupies all the wooded parts of North America from the northern limit of trees southward in the forested mountains to Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and the southern part of the Sierra Nevada in California.
Like other members of the weasel tribe, the marten is a fierce and merciless creature of rapine, but unlike the mink and weasel, it avoids the abodes of man and loves the remotest depths of the wilderness.
Martens are endowed with an exceedingly nervous and excitable temperament, combined with all the flashing quickness of weasels. They are more restless than any other among the larger species of their notably restless tribe, and couple with this extraordinary and tireless vigor. This is admirably shown in captivity, when by the hour they dart back and forth, up and down and around their cages with almost incredible speed.
In the forest they climb trees and jump from branch to branch with all the agility of a squirrel—in fact, they pursue and capture red squirrels in fair chase, and have been seen in pursuit of the big California gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus). On the ground they move about quickly, hunting weasel-like, under brush piles and other cover.