Silver 



18 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



Silver or Light Silver. — Silvery all over, except the neck; 

 dark below and white only on the tip of the tail. 

 Silver Black or Dark Silver. — Black all over, except the tip 

 of the tail and the silvery hairs on the hips and 

 forehead. 

 Black. — Pure black all over, except the tip of the tail, with, 

 perhaps, dark silvery hairs only discernible on 

 close examination. 

 No two foxes are exactly alike in colour. Three silver foxes exam- 

 ined had no white tips on their tails and others had only a half dozen 

 white hairs — yet the white tip is one of the marks of identification for 

 the species. Others had white patches on the legs or breast, while the 

 rest of the colouring was almost pure black. 



A silver fox usually produces silver pups when mated with a pure 

 red in two crosses. If the first cross produces all red pups, two plans 

 may be adopted : 



(a) A male and a female pup may be crossbred, producing, on the 

 average, one silver pup to three reds. 



(b) A red pup may be bred to the silver parent, producing, on the 

 average, 50 per cent, red pups. 



It is a more unusual occurrence to secure a blend or intermediate 

 colour from crossing a silver and a red. By breeding the pups for four 

 generations to a silver, the red colour is eliminated from the pelage 

 markings. The segregation of the red and silver colour appears to be 

 very common in many localities, but, in others, the roan or intermediate 

 form of colour is produced quite frequently, the parent characters blend- 

 ing and the hybrid breeding true. 



In this connection it will be of interest to quote from a letter dated 

 August 2, 1912, received from Professor W. Bateson of Cambridge Uni- 

 versity, England, a naturalist of high repute and an authority on hair 

 pigmentation. In the early stages of the investigation the usual opinion 

 of naturalists and breeders was accepted and it was thus stated to Pro- 

 fessor Bateson that silver parent foxes would produce an occasional red 

 pup. This popular opinion has since been found to be usually incorrect. 

 Professor Bateson's opinion has, therefore, been proved correct in every 

 detail by subsequent developments. 



Professor Bateson says : 



<( 



At first sight I should suppose silver to be a recessive to red 

 and that it would always breed true. This, however, you say, is 

 not the case. If silvers, really, when mated together, throw reds, 

 there must be some complication which we cannot yet represent. 



