Canada Lynx 
tips of ears with tufts of long, black hairs. Under parts white, 
tail tipped with black, face-ruff long, white bordered with black. 
Range. Boreal North America, south formerly to the mountains 
of Pennsylvania. Replaced in Newfoundland by the allied 
Newfoundland Lynx L. subsolanus Bangs, darker and more 
richly coloured; and in Alaska by a paler form L. canadensis 
mollipilosus Stone. 
The Canada lynx is the real lynx of all the north, that 
mysterious creature which the ancients believed possessed the 
power of seeing through all substances, whether opaque or not 
to other eyes. 
The distinction between this species and the lynx of North- 
ern Asia and Europe appears to be no more than may with 
safety be ascribed to local environment. Those branches of the 
family which have strayed southward into the forests of a more 
temperate climate have invariably decreased in size, showing 
that the true home of their race is in the north. 
The Canada lynx is a savage, flat-faced beast, with enor- 
mous muscular legs and paws out of all proportion to the 
size of its lean body and absurd retrousse tail. Its soft 
fur of clouded gray is so blended with various shades of pale 
buff and tawny as to be extremely difficult to distinguish in 
any light or against almost any background; even in the cruel 
publicity of a barred cage it is still indistinct, and one might 
well fancy the cage empty at a little distance. 
In the northern woods the lynx travels with silent leaps, his 
broad paws supporting him on the snow, or alighting without 
a sound among brittle twigs or dry leaves of a past summer, 
enabling him to pounce on grouse or hare before they have 
time to take alarm. He can also climb trees with ease, to rob 
the nests of birds and squirrels, or streteh himself along a lower 
branch from which he can launch himself on whatever may 
pass beneath. Yet since every creature that he hunts is equally 
well fitted for the contest, and even more earnest and watchful 
in its endeavours to avoid him and so enjoy its own wild life 
in the woods a little longer, the lynx must necessarily go 
without food often for days together in the winter, glad enough 
perhaps to pull some frozen scrap of flesh or skin out of the 
snow, dropped there by more fortunate hunters weeks before. 
The lack of insect scavengers is not felt in the woods in win- 
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