THE ARCTIC FOX 111 



birds especially ; the Magpie, who has a very similar character himself, 

 takes particular pleasure in mobbing him and betraying his movements. 

 Among serious foes he has, out of Britain, to reckon the Wolf and the 

 Lynx, while he may occasionally fall a prey to the Eagle, which grips 

 him by the haunches with one foot, while muzzling him with the other. 

 Man, except in England, is his most deadly foe, but the little beast's 

 cunning and resource render him a difficult animal to exterminate, and 

 he survives long even in cultivated and civilised countries. 



THE ARCTIC FOX 



(Cants lagopus) 



FOXES as a group are very widely distributed and numerous in species, 

 but of the foreign ones the Arctic animal is the best known and one of 

 the most remarkable in several ways. It is smaller than our Fox, with 

 shorter muzzle and ears, and altogether less elegant form. Its coat is 

 either dark-coloured greyish or brownish slaty or white, often vary- 

 ing according to season. Not all individuals, however, are dark in 

 summer and white in winter, even in the same localities ; some are always 

 dark, and some always white. Of two individuals in the London 

 Zoological Gardens at the time of writing, one is merely brownish in 

 summer and bluish-slate in winter, while the other is dark with white 

 under-parts and extremities in summer, and all white in the winter. The 

 grey winter skins are the valuable Blue Fox fur, and in the Prybiloff 

 Islands, where the Fur-seals breed, American enterprise is attempting 

 to fix this blue strain. Not only are the Foxes fed in winter with seal- 

 meat, but they are selected when captured for fur. Some of the best 

 blues are set free again, while all white ones are killed off. 



Inhabiting as it does the high northern regions of the world, this 

 Fox has for long been a puzzle to naturalists, who could not under- 

 stand how it lived in winter. It has been found, however, that it 

 practises "cold-storage" in the short summer season of plenty, hiding 

 away the eggs of sea-fowl and doubtless the birds themselves, as well 



