242 THE COMMON POX. 



beneath white. It resides in the mountains of 

 Nepal and the hills of Northern India, and is 

 probably allied to the former * Coal or Brant Fox. 



We now come to the foxes of the old continent, 

 having the tail tipped with white. 



The Common Fox (Vulpes vulgaris, Briss. ; 

 Canis vulpes, Linn.) — Foxes Avith white tippc'd 

 tails are found in the four quarters of the globe, 

 but they do not extend to the south of the northern 

 hemisphere in cither: among them the common 

 red species appears to occupy the greatest geogra- 

 phical surface, being found from Spain to Norway, 

 and from Great Britain as far as the eastern ex- 

 tremity of European Russia. It is said, likewise, 

 to have been carried by sporting amateurs to the 

 United States, and to have multiplied in the 

 western hemisphere. But he must have been 

 fastidious indeed who could not find sufficient 

 variety and quantity of indigenous foxes in the 

 west, to import the British on purpose for hunt- 

 ing : it is more likely that this report arose from 

 seeing the red and little foxes of the United 

 States. Kalm, who first adverted to this opinion, 

 did not believe in it, although he might well pause 

 before he decided that these races were not of the 

 same species as the European. Another account, 

 asserting their arrival on the ice in a severe winter 

 ^bout the period of the first European settlements 



* Sec Mr. Gray's notice in Loudon's Mag. of Nat. Hist. 

 Vol. i. 



