196 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



encroachment of settlements and especially with trapping and 

 poisoning campaigns carried on against coyotes or wolves. 

 Baird records the usual stomach contents as "fragments of skin, 

 leather with hair, berries, remnants of mice, and grasshoppers" 

 so that economically the kit fox is an asset through its destruc- 

 tion of small rodents and grasshoppers and deserves whatever 

 protection may be accorded it. 



This race of the kit fox formerly extended in range as far 

 north as the Saskatchewan River in western Canada but is 

 now gone from many parts of this area. Specimens in the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology from Calgary and Buffalo 

 Lake, Alberta, were received in 1897, and others from Assini- 

 boia were obtained in the following year. Fowler (1937), 

 however, writing of changes in the fauna of the High River 

 district, Alberta, states that it became extinct there shortly 

 after those dates; "in fact, only those people who were here 

 before 1900 can recall having seen a kit-fox. My father states 

 that the last bunch of kit-foxes he saw was in the summer of 

 1897. These had their den in a sandy knoll about a mile 

 north of High River." 



LONG-EARED KIT Fox; DESERT KIT Fox 



VULPES MACROTIS MACROTis Merriam 



Vulpes macrotis Merriam, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. 4, p. 136, Feb. 18, 1888 

 ("Riverside, Riverside County, California," vicinity of Box Springs, western 

 margin of San Jacinto Plain, about 10 miles southeast of Riverside). 



FIGS. : Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale, 1937, pi. 9, bottom fig. in color; and (other races) 

 figs. 154-162 (skull, live animal, habitat). 



The long-eared kit fox resembles V. velox but has longer ears 

 (about 80 mm.), smaller hind foot, and slightly brighter color- 

 ing, but otherwise it has a similar appearance. As a species its 

 range extends from Riverside County in southern California 

 eastward across the Great Basin into extreme western Texas 

 and south into Lower California and northern Mexico. Over 

 this range it divides into a number of slightly marked local 

 races, of which no less than nine, including the typical form, 

 are described. These with their type localities are: arizonensis, 

 from 2 miles south of Tule Tanks near the Mexican border of 

 Yuma County, Ariz.; arsipus, from Daggett, San Bernardino 

 County, Calif.; devia, from Llano de Yrais, opposite Magdalena 

 Island, Lower California; mutica, from Tracy, San Joaquin 



