Arctic For 
tipped with whitish, legs lighter; under parts white; tail buffy 
below, tip white, very full and bushy; a black patch on each 
side of the muzzle. 
Range. Nebraska to Colorado and northward over the plains. 
This is a much smaller animal than our red and gray foxes, 
and is restricted entirely to the Western plains. 
Arctic Fox 
Vulpes lagopus (Linnzus) 
Also called Blue Fox, White Fox. 
Length. 40 inches. 
Description. Upper parts brown, belly whitish, fur everywhere 
bluish-gray at the base, and sometimes this colour predomi- 
nates. In winter the whole animal is pure white. 
Range. Arctic regions. There appear to be several geographic 
forms. 
The little blue foxes of the far north live in communities or 
fox-villages, digging twenty or thirty burrows together in places 
where the soil is light and sandy. In summer they hunt for 
lemmings in the moss-grown tundras and barren grounds, dig- 
ging them out of their holes or pouncing on them as they 
traverse their runways in the thick, wet sphagnous beds that cover 
the swamps and boggy places. 
At this season the Arctic fox lives in luxury, for besides the 
lemmings there are numberless wild fowl nesting by the margin 
of every stream; and on the ridges, willow grouse and snow 
buntings hide their eggs in the reindeer moss and low bushes, 
or in warm hollows where the short-lived blossoms of the north- 
land crowd together in dense borders of bright colours. 
The lemmings are so numerous and easily caught that a 
very few hours each day spent in hunting them would easily 
keep the fox supplied with meat. 
But the little stub-nosed blue-fox, though he lacks something 
of the wily shrewdness of the long-headed red fox of the wood- 
land, is nevertheless a very intelligent beast. 
Knowing that summer will soon be over, and the lemmings 
safé in their hidden roadways beneath ice and snow, and the 
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