108 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 
ish, legs black, partly white on the inside; throat white, ears tip- 
ped with black. 
The cunning of the fox both in robbing the hen roost and in 
eluding his pursuers is well known to everyone; and it is to the 
present species that all the stories of shrewdness pertain, the 
gray fox being an animal of quite different character. 
The food of the red fox besides poultry, consists of all sorts 
of wild birds, and all of the smaller quadrupeds from the size of 
a fawn and woodchuck down to the smallest mice; insects, too, 
form part of his diet when nothing better is to be found. 
Foxes have their dens in the woods, usually dug out in some 
rocky locality, and here the young are reared. I have known 
young foxes to become quite tame when kept in captivity, but 
only allowed one person who was constantly near to handle 
them. Of the rest of the family or strangers they always were 
more or less afraid. 
Red foxes from the earliest days have been regularly pursued 
by fox hunters with their packs of hounds, and an old fox will 
lead them a long chase, rarely going to earth unless completely 
worn out. In the more thickly settled parts of the country foxes 
are often protected by lovers of the sport expressly for hunting, 
and there is many a difference of opinion between the hunter and 
the farmer on the question of shooting these animals. Sometimes 
too, foxes are introduced from elsewhere when they have be- 
come well-nigh exterminated, and Mr. Rhoads presents pretty 
conclusive evidence that the red foxes of lower New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania and southward are the descendants of foxes origi- 
nally imported from England for hunting purposes. The earliest 
records quoted by Mr. Rhoads show that the gray fox was the 
only one then known to the inhabitants (see Mammals of Penna. 
and N. J., p. 145). 
Vulpes fuluus Abbott, Cook’s Geol. of N. J., 1868, p. 753.— 
Geol. Cape May Co., 1857, p. 137.—Rhoads, Mam. Pa. and N. 
J., 1903, p. 145. 
Vulpes pennsylvanicus Rhoads, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 
1807; D. 31. 
