PROCKEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol.. II, pp. 661-676. December 28, 1900. 



PRELIMINARY REVISION OF THE NORTH 

 AMERICAN RED FOXES. 



By C. Hart Merriam. 

 [PI.ATES XXXVI-XXXVII.] 



The specimens necessary for a final revision of the North 

 American Red Foxes do not exist in any museum. Never- 

 theless the collections of the U. S. Biological Survey and 

 National Museum show that several well-marked forms have 

 escaped description, and furnish material for a preliminary 

 study of the group. 



For many years it has been customary to refer all our red 

 foxes, with the single exception of specimens from the far west, 

 to Vid^es fulvtis Desmarest; and some naturalists have con- 

 sidered this animal the same as Vulpes vulpes of northern 

 Europe and Siberia. Outram Bangs, in a paper published in 

 the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in 

 March 1897 (vol. xi, pp. 53-55), stated that the American 

 species is quite distinct from the European and pointed out the 

 characters by which either may be distinguished from the other ; 

 at the same time he described a new fox from Nova Scotia, 

 which he named Vulpes -pemisylvanica vafra} A year later 

 Mr. Bangs described another species, from Newfoundland, 

 which he named Vulpcs deleti'ix? 



Baird, in the Report of Stansbury's Expedition to Great Salt 

 Lake, published in May or June 1852, described a cross- 

 fox from Utah under the name Vulpes macrourus, to which 



1 This name being preoccupied, Mr. Bangs renamed the form rubricosa. 

 Science, NS., vii, pp. 271-272, Feb. 25, 1898. 



-Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., xii, pp. 36-38, March 24, 1898. 



Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., December 1900. (661) 



