QUADRUPEDS. 29 



black. The tail is very bushy, but less ferruginous than .he body, 

 the hairs being mostly terminated with black, which is more ob- 

 nous toward the extremity than at the origin of the member, giv- 

 ng the whole a dark appearance. A few of the hairs are lighter 

 at the end of the tail, but not sufficiently to allow us to state that 

 it is tipped with white. 



In summer the fur of the red fox is long, fine, brilliant in color, 

 and lustrous over the whole body. In winter its length and dense- 

 ness is considerably increased. The red fox is nearly two feet 

 long and about eighteen inches high : the tail is about sixteen 

 inches long. The peltry is of considerable value, and employed in 

 various ways by the manufacturers. 



The gray fox is very common thr< ughout this country, and is 

 found more immediately in the vicinity of human habitations than 

 either of the other species. It is pursued by our sportsmen with 

 more pleasure than the red fox, because it does not immediately for- 

 sake its haunts and run for miles in one direction, but, after 

 various doublings, is generally killed near the place whence it first 

 started. 



The gray fox, like all the species we described, exhibits con- 

 siderable differences of color at different ages and in different states 

 of pelage. The length of the head and body is about twenty-four, 

 and of the tail eleven inches. The general color of the animal is 

 grizzly, becoming gradually darker from the fore shoulders to the 

 posterior parts of the back, produced by the intermixture of ful- 

 vous hairs with those constituting the mass of the pelage, which 

 are thus colored ; near the body the hair is rather plumbeous, then 

 yellowish, then white, and then uniformly tipped with lustrous 

 black. The front, from the top of the head to the- edge of the 

 orbiUs, is gray, while the rest of the face, from the internal angle 

 of the eye to within half an inch of the ext emity of the snout, is 

 blackish ; at the extremity on each side of the granulated black 

 tip of the nose it is of a yellowish white. A fine line of black 

 tipped hairs extends upwards and outwards, from half an inch be- 

 low the internal angle of the eyes until it is intersected by a simi- 

 lar black line about half an inch beyond the external angle of the 

 eye, thus forming a very acute triangle, whose base is on the side 

 of the face. This blackish gray triangle, joined to the peculiar 

 sharpness of the face, and the line produced by the black whiskers 

 on the sides of the nose, singularly increase the appearance of sly- 

 ness and cunning expressed in the physiognomy of this animal 



