226 The Arctic, or TVJiite Fox. 



easily piled over their stores, and then forcibly pressed down by the noise. I 

 frequently observed my Dog-Fox, when no snow was attainable, gather his 

 chain into his mouth, and in that manner carefully coil it so as to hide the 

 meat. On moving away, satisfied with his operations, he of course had 

 drawn it after him again, and sometimes with great patience repeated his 

 labours five or six times, until in a passion he has been constrained to eat 

 his food without its having been rendered luscious by previous concealment. 

 Snow is the substitute for water to these creatures, and on a large lump 

 being given to them they break it in pieces with their feet and roll on it with 

 gi-eat delight. When the snow was slightly scattered on the decks, they did 

 not lick it up as dogs are accustomed to do, but by repeatedly pressing with 

 their nose collected small lumps at its extremity, and then drew it into the 

 mouth with the assistance of the tongue." 



" In another passage, Captain Lyon, alluding to the above-named Dog- 

 Fox, says : — ^" He was small and not perfectly white ; but his tameness was 

 so remarkable that I could not bear to kill him, but coDfined him on deck 

 in a small hutch, with a scope of chain. The little animal astonished us very 

 much by his extraordinary sagacity, for during tlie first day, finding himself 

 much tormented by being drawn out repeatedly by his chain, he at lengthy 

 ■whenever he retreated to his hut, took this carefully up in his mouth, and 

 drew it so completely after him that no one who valued his fingers would 

 endeavour to take hold of the end attached to the staple." 



" Richardson says that notwithstanding the degree of intelligence which 

 the anecdotes related by Captain Lyon shew them to possess, they are unlike 

 the Red Fox in being extremely unsuspicious ; and instances are related ot 

 their standing by, while the hunter is preparing the trap, and running head- 

 long into it the moment he retires a few paces. Captain Lyon received 

 fifteen from a single trap in four hours. The voice of the Arctic Fox is a 

 'kind of yelp, and when a man approaches theu' breeding places they put 

 their heads out of their burrows and bark at him, allowing him to eome so 

 near that they may easily be shot. 



" They appear to have the power of decoying other animals within their 

 reach, by imitating their voices. " While tenting, we observed a Fox 

 prowling on a hill side, and heard him for several hours afterwards in different 

 places, imitating the cry of a brentgoose." They feed on eggs, young birds, 

 blubber, and carrion of any kind ; but their principal food seems to be 

 lemmings of different species. 



" Richardson thinks the " brown variety," as he calls it, the more 

 common one in the neighbourhood of Behring's Straits. He states that they 

 breed on the sea coast, and chiefly within the Arctic circle, forming bm-rows 

 in sandy spots, not solitary like the Red Fox, but in little villages, twenty 

 or thirty burrows being constructed adjoining to each other. He saw one 

 of these villages on Point Tumagain, in latitude 68}^ ° . Towards the 

 middle of winter, continues our author, they retire to the southward, evidently 

 in search of food, keeping as much as possible on the coast, and going much 

 jtartker to the southward in districts where the coast line is in the directioB 



