424 SPOUTING ADVENTURES IN THE FAB WEST. 



enjoy an unusual feast of meat. It also makes a raid on 

 the nests of gulls, cormorants, guillemots, and kindred 

 birds, but they are generally too cautious to place their 

 eggs within its reach, so make their domiciles amidst the 

 most inaccessible crags. 



This fox is supposed to have been isolated from the 

 main-land by the advancing sea, which covered a large area 

 of country, and placed a strait sixteen miles wide between 

 its home and the region where pabulum was plentiful. Be- 

 ing unable to find any bone-making, nourishing food, its 

 remote ancestors began to dwindle gradually in size, until, 

 in successive generations, the present limit was reached. 

 Were these insect-eating dwarfs transferred to the main- 

 land, where food is abundant, their posterity would proba- 

 bly regain the original size in the course of years. 



They may now be seen loitering about all day long, turn- 

 ing over stones and plants in search of insects, and, when 

 found, devouring them with the greatest avidity. Several 

 have been dissected, but nothing was found in their stom- 

 achs except grasshoppers and kindred insects. Their hab- 

 its have been. even changed by isolation, for, instead of 

 prowling about at night and fleeing from man, they roam 

 abroad at all hours, and have no more fear of their human 

 foe than they have of a shrub. They will scarcely move 

 out of his way in many instances, and they may look up 

 into his face with a gaze that expresses curiosity more 

 than fear. The reason for this simplicity of nature is that 

 man has long been a stranger to them, though he is more 

 familiar now, as some pei'sons have occupied the islands as 

 sheep-ranges. 



These say that the creatures are perfectly harmless even 

 to lambs ; but that would seem to be an open question, as 

 it does not look probable that they could have lost all their 

 carnivorous propensities by even an insect diet. They are 

 so numerous on the islands that a person may meet twenty 

 of them in an hour's walk; and on Santa Cruz Island, 

 which has an area of one hundred and fifty square miles, 

 they are very abundant. The skins of the adults are often 



