MAMMALS OF MINNESOTA. 81 



general color is tawny red, rather darker on the shoulders 

 and flanks. The tail hairs are dark tipped; the outside of the 

 legs and back of ears are also black. The under parts includ- 

 ing the chin and a space about the muzzle and also the tip of 

 the tail, are white. 



The variations from this pattern are now generally consid- 

 ered to be due to melanism for which no satisfactory cause can 

 be assigned. Complete melanism gives us the Black or Silver- 

 Gray Fox (V. argentatus). In high latitudes often quite black 

 save the tip of the tail. Elsewhere this phase consists in a 

 silvery gray coloration of the upper parts. 



Intermediate conditions give rise to the Cross-Fox (V. 

 decussatus) in which the ventral line, muzzle and legs are 

 blackish, with two cross bars on the inside of the legs. The 

 median line above is also dark and is crossed by a dark shoulder 

 band. The head is gray and the sides are marked with fulvous. 



It is authoritatively stated that these so-called varieties may 

 be found in the same litter, though to what extent the varia- 

 tions are inherited, is not known. Audubon gives an interest- 

 ing case of this sort. The usual food of foxes seems to be field 

 and wood mice and rabbits, and it is probable that their efforts 

 in this direction deserve to palliate their occasional forays on 

 the poultry yard. We are fortunately exempt in this country 

 from the mania for fox hunting prevalent in Europe, though it 

 might be well if some other, if less exciting inducement to 

 equestrian exercise, could be secured. The fox hunts alone or 

 in families, and is thus unlike the wolves. The young are five 

 to seven in number and are tenderly nurtured, it being during 

 the rearing of this growing family that the fox becomes most 

 audacious and destructive. It would be idle to recount tales 

 of the acumen of the fox, though one is tempted to revert to 

 the folk lore of the south as illustrating a tendency to present 

 another view of Reynard. 



Anyone, who like the writer has watched unobserved the 

 playful gambols of a family of young foxes, will have a weak- 

 ness for the gay pests ever after. 



GENUS U ROC YON. 



This genus is distinguished from the foxes, of the genus Vul- 

 pes, by the fact that the crests for the insertion of the temporal 

 muscles are widely separate, by the presence of a supplementary 

 tubercle on the lower sectorial and a mane of rigid hairs on the 

 tail. 



