336 THE ARCTIC FOX. 
followed the fence with the whole pack about me, clear round the plantation, but without 
striking the trail again, or making any discovery. 
The affair now became quite serious. The reputation of our hounds was suffering ; 
and, besides, I found they were really losing confidence in themselves, and would not run 
with half the staunch eagerness which had before characterized them. The joke of being 
regularly baffled had been so often repeated that they now came to consider it a settled 
thing that they were never to take another Fox again, and were disposed to give up in 
despair. Some of the neighbours had grown superstitious about it, and vowed that this 
must be a weir Fox, who could make himself invisible when he pleased. 
At last I determined to watch at the fence-corner, and see what became of the Fox. 
Within about the usual time I heard him heading towards the mysterious corner, as 
the voices of the pack clearly indicated. I almost held my breath in my concealment, 
while I watched for the appearance of this extraordinary creature. In a little while the 
Fox made his appearance, coming on at quite a leisurely pace, a little in advance of the 
pack. When he reached the corner, he climbed im a most unhurried and deliberate way 
to the top rail of the fence, and then walked along it, balancing himself as carefully as 
a rope-dancer. He proceeded down the side of the fence next to the forest m which 
I was concealed. 
I followed cautiously, so as to keep him in view. Before he had thus proceeded more 
than two hundred yards, the hounds came up to the corner, and he very deliberately 
paused and looked back for a moment, then he hurried along the fence some paces 
farther, and when he came opposite a dead but leaning tree which stood inside the fence, 
some twelve or sixteen feet distant, he stooped, made a high and long bound to a knot 
upon the side of its trunk, up which he ran, and entered a hollow in the top where it had 
been broken off, nearly thirty feet from the ground, in some storm. I respected the 
astuteness of the trick too much to betray its author, since I was now personally satisfied ; 
and he continued for a long time, while I kept his secret, to be the wonder and the topic 
of neighbouring Fox-hunters, until at last one of them happened to take the same idea 
into his head, and found out the mystery. He avenged himself by cutting down the tree, 
and capturing the smart Fox. 
The tree stood at such a distance from the fence that no one of us who had examined 
the ground ever dreamed of the possibility that the Fox would leap to it; it seemed 
a physical impossibility, but practice and the convenient knot had enabled cunning 
Reynard to overcome it with assured ease.” 
ONE of the most celebrated species of the Foxes is the Arctic Fox, called by the 
Russians PEszi, and by the Greenlanders TERRIENNIAK. ‘This animal is in very great 
repute in the mercantile world on account of its beautifully silly fur, which in the cold 
winter months becomes perfectly white. During the summer the fur is generally of a 
ervey, or dirty brown, but is frequently found of a leaden grey, or of a brown tint with 
a wash of blue. Towards the change of the seasons the fur becomes mottled ; and by 
reason of this extreme variableness has caused the animal to be known by several 
different titles. Sometimes it is called the White Fox, sometimes the Blue Fox, some- 
times the Sooty Fox, sometimes the Pied Fox, and sometimes the Stone Fox. 
This animal is found in Lapland, Iceland, Siberia, Kamschatka, and North America, 
in all of which places it is eagerly sought by the hunters for the sake of its fur. The 
pure white coat of the winter season is the most valuable, and the bluish-grey fur of the 
summer months is next to the white the colour that is most in request. The soles of the 
feet ave thickly coated with hair, from which circumstance it has derived its name of 
Lagopus, or hairy foot. 
It is found that this animal possesses the power of imitating the cries of the birds on 
which it loves to feed, and it is probable that it employs this gift for the purpose of 
decoying its prey to their destruction. Although it is sufficiently cunning in obtaining 
its food, it seems to be remarkably destitute of the astute craft which aids the generality 
of the Foxes to avoid hidden dangers or to baffle their foes. It is easily induced to enter 
a trap, and will generally permit a hunter to approach within range of an easy shot. It 
