74 ANIMALS OF THE 



whole country is covered with deep snow, and 

 the provisions which these creatures are able to 

 procure can be but precarious and scanty. Its 

 becoming finer may also proceed from the seve- 

 rity of the cold, that contracts the pores of the 

 skin, and the hair consequently takes the shape 

 of the aperture through which it grows, as wires 

 are made smaller by being drawn through a 

 smaller orifice. However this may be, all the 

 animals of the arctic climates may be said to have 

 their winter and summer garments, except very 

 far to the north, as in Greenland, where the cold 

 is so continually intense, and the food so scarce, 

 that neither the bears nor foxes change colour.* 



The ermine, as was said, is remarkable among 

 these for the softness, the closeness, and the 

 warmth of its fur. It is brown in summer, like 

 the weasel, and changes colour before the winter 

 is begun, becoming a beautiful cream colour, all 

 except the tip of the tail, as was said before, 

 which still continues black. M. Daubenton had 

 one of these brought him with its white winter 

 fur, which he put into a cage and kept, in order 

 to observe the manner of moulting its hair. He 

 received it in the beginning of March ; in a very 

 short time it began to shed its coat, and a mix- 

 ture of brown was seen to prevail among the 

 white, so that at the 9th of the same month its 

 head was nearly become of a reddish-brown. 

 Day after day this colour appeared to extend, at 

 first along the neck and down the back, in the 



* Crantz's History of Greenland, vol. i. p. 72. 



