272 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. [No. 55 



forests as long as snowshoe rabbits and grouse are sufficiently abun- 

 dant to furnish them food. Hunting by stealth, soft footed, silent, 

 and invisible, they pounce upon their prey or wait by the trails until 

 game comes their way. If the game proves undesirable or a man 

 appears, they vanish like ghosts, and many hunters who have been 

 for years in their country have never seen one alive except one 

 trapped or treed by dogs. Their shadowy-brown summer coats and 

 frosty gray winter coats afford remarkably perfect concealing colora- 

 tion at all seasons, a protection they certainly do not need except in 

 stalking their prey. In the presence of man they are usually as 

 timid as rabbits, but there are records of their attacking man when 

 desperate with hunger. 



Food habits. Generally their food consists of snowshoe rabbits, 

 grouse, and such other small game as they can capture, but in 

 Alaska Charles Sheldon found them killing mountain sheep in 

 winter, and there is good reason to suspect them of killing deer and 

 other large game animals when opportunity offers. Although the 

 lynx is a valuable fur animal, yielding a light, fluffy fur of un- 

 usual beauty and value, it is perhaps fortunate that it is not more 

 abundant in the State, 



Family CANIDAE: Wolves, Foxes, and Dogs 



CANIS LYCAON GIGAS (TOWNSEND) 

 NORTHWESTERN TIMBER WOLF ; GRAY WOLF ; BLACK WOLF ; ESKILOX of the Wasco 



Lupus gigas Townsend, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. 2 : 75, 1850. 



Type. Collected near Fort Vancouver, Wash., by J. K. Townsend, December 

 19, 1835. 



General characters. Larger than the eastern timber wolf, colors generally 

 darker and richer. Size about as in nubilus of the Great Plains but much 

 darker. Pelage long and dense in winter, thin and coarse with little fur in 

 summer ; a long coarse mane on back of neck, a triangular cape over shoulders, 

 and narrow glandular line of bristles on top of tail near base. Normal winter 

 coat dull pchraceous, heavily clouded over back and tail with black tips of long 

 coarse hairs ; lower parts buffy ochraceous, sometimes whitish on throat and 

 back of belly ; legs and feet bright ochraceous ; occasionally black or dusky all 

 over. Summer colors much the same or slightly darker and more rusty. Young 

 black at birth, paling later to dusky and dull ochraceous. 



Measurements. Taken from well-tanned skin from Estacada, Oreg. : Total 

 length, 1,610 mm; tail, 420; hind foot, 245; ear, inside, 94, from crown, 84. 

 Skull of adult male : Basal length, 230 ; zygomatic width, 145. Skull of Town- 

 send's type: Total length, 273 [10.70 inches], greatest width, 150 [5.90 inches], 

 from Baird. Weight probably about 100 pounds. 



Distribution and habitat. A few of these large, dark gray wolves 

 are still found in the timbered country west of the Cascades in Ore- 

 gon, and locally northward to British Columbia and Alaska (fig. 62). 

 In recent years they have been found mainly along the west slope of 

 the Cascade Range, but before extensive white settlements were made 

 in the State they seem to have been common in the Willamette Valley 

 and west to the coast. In 1805 Lewis and Clark reported them at 

 the mouth of the Columbia, and in 1835 Townsend secured the type 

 of this subspecies near Fort Vancouver, just north of the Columbia 

 River. In 1834 Wyeth reported several killed along the Deschutes 

 River, and in 1854 Suckley collected specimens near The Dalles. In 

 1897 Captain Applegate reported them as formerly common, but at 

 that time extremely rare in the southern Cascade region, 



