Sable
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Sable. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a dark fur-bearing animal of the weasel family. It is about eighteen inches in length, with a fine bushy tail two-thirds as long. It is related closely to the American marten, and, like it, has fur of three lengths. It is one of the most important fur-bearing animals of Russia and Siberia. Large numbers are trapped in the winter season, the pelts are taken off whole, turned inside out, stretched on a frame and dried, then sold to local buyers and sent to the Leipsic fur market. The fur is considered more valuable than that of the marten or American sable. The fur has the peculiar quality of smoothing in any direction. Fine dark pelts are worth from $10 to $150 in Leipsic or London. It is the most expensive of all fur. The nobility of Russia regard the fur of the sable as more desirable than that of the seal. The sable overcoat of the czar is valued at $22,000. The darker the fur, the more valuable it is considered. The corporation robes of the London aldermen are lined with sable. The color of the fur of the sable being generally dark, the word has been used to mean black, as in such expressions as, "Night, sable goddess," "Sable trappings of woe," "Sable hue," etc. See Marten ; Fur
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the Mustela zibellina, a digitigrade carnivorous mammal, nearly allied to the common marten and pine marten, found chiefly in Siberia and Kamtchatka, and hunted for its fur. Its length, exclusive of the tail, is about 18 inches. Its fur, which is extremely lustrous, and SABLE hence of the very highest value, is genthe erally brown, grayish-yellow on throat, and with small grayish-yellow spots scattered on the sides of the neck. It is densest during winter. Two other species of sable are enumerated, the Japanese sable (M. melanopus) and a North American species (M. (M. leucopus). The Tartar sable (M. siberica) is the name given to a species of the weasel genus found in northern Russia and Siberia, and the pekan (M. canadensis or M. pennantii) of North America is sometimes known as the Hudson Bay sable. Sable hair is used in the manufacture of artists' pencils.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that sable pelts were shipped to the Leipzig fur market, that trade was already stripping Siberia bare; by the 1920s the wild sable was close to extinction across much of its range. The Soviet government banned sable hunting outright in 1935, set up reserves such as Barguzin on Lake Baikal, and restocked the taiga, so that Martes zibellina (the genus is now Martes, not Collier's Mustela) again numbers in the millions and is trapped under quota, with much fur also coming from farms. Leipzig's fur houses are long gone; Russian sable is sold at auction in St Petersburg, into a market much reduced by the collapse in demand for fur. One footnote for painters: the "sable" of a good watercolour brush is usually kolinsky hair from the Siberian weasel Collier's lists as the "Tartar sable", not from the true sable at all.
Written for this edition, 2026.