TWO FASHIONABLE FURS 215 



dark or light. Consequently, it seems a possible explana- 

 tion of the phenomenon under consideration that the blue 

 phase of the Arctic fox indicates a reversion to the 

 ancestral coloration of the species, due to the fact that 

 no advantage is to be gained by the assumption of a 

 white livery. Such reversion might well take place only 

 in certain individuals of a species, and would probably 

 tend to become more or less completely hereditary. Before 

 such an explanation can, however, be even tentatively 

 accepted, it is necessary to ascertain whether the blue 

 Arctic foxes of Iceland are in the habit of making winter 

 stores of provisions. If they are not, but hunt their prey 

 in winter, the theory will not hold good. 



For animals which hunt their prey in winter, or are 

 themselves hunted, it would seem essential that they should 

 be white even in the highest latitudes, where the long 

 Polar night lasts three-quarters of the year, since in the 

 bright starlight — to say nothing of moonlight — they would, 

 if dark-coloured, be almost as conspicuous on the snow 

 as in daylight. 



As regards the number of Arctic fox skins which find 

 their way into the market, Mr. W. Poland, writing ten years 

 ago, states that from twenty-five thousand to sixty thousand 

 of the white phase were then annually imported from 

 Siberia, the greater number of these coming to Leipsic. 

 The fur of these is of a rather coarse quality, quite different 

 from that of the fine-haired Greenland skins. In 1891 about 

 nine thousand white skins were imported by the Hudson 

 Bay and Alaska Companies, and nearly one thousand by 

 the Royal Greenland Company. Of blue skins, about 

 two thousand were annually imported into London by the 

 Alaska Company, and some five hundred to Copenhagen 

 by the Greenland Company, although in 1891 the number 



