CANIS LAGOPUS. HI 



fellow-prisoners of whose honesty they are doubtful. In this case snow 

 is of great assistance, as being easily piled over their stores, and then 

 forcibly pressed down by the nose. I frequently observed my dog- 

 fox, when no snow was obtainable, 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 operation, he of course has 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 cat his food 

 without its having been rendered luxurious by previous concealment." 



In 1SG3 Professor Alfred Newton, F.R.S., joined in an expedition 

 to Spitzbergen, and amongst the intei'csting notes published by him 

 are the following *, which refer to the animal we are here concerned 

 with : — " The Arctic Fox is pretty numerous along the shores of 

 Ice Sound ; and we not only frequently saw examples of it, but in the 

 immediate neighboiu-hood of the cliffs wherein the Alcidce were nesting 

 one could, by listening almost at any time in the twenty-four hours, hear 

 its yapping bark. It is of course the chief enemy of all the different 

 kinds of birds, and their dread of it appears to influence them greatly 

 in their choice of breeding-quarters. What the Foxes do to get a 

 living in winter w^hen the birds have left the country, is one of the 

 most curious questions that has presented itself to my mind for some 

 time. The greater number of them are said to remain on the land, 

 and to be as active during the long polar night as they are in summer ; 

 yet there are no berries by which they might eke out their existence, 

 and there can be no open water, on the margin of which they might 

 find food, within miles of their haunts. The most natural explanation 

 which occurs to one is that they lay up a stock of provisions ; but nobody, 

 that I am aware of, has ever found such a store-closet." He adds : 

 " A considerable collection of shells of 2hja truncata, which I found 

 one day on the moraine of a glacier in Safe Haven, may possibly have 

 been due to the cause suggested." Professor Newton's sagacious 

 anticipation concerning " store-closets " was subsequently abundantly 

 and very interestingly confirmed by H. ^\ . Fcilden, F.G.S., who 



* See Proc. Zool. Soc. 1804, p. 49G. 



