MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 145 



'dollars' worth of poultry in Pennsylvania. Gray foxes do less injury to poul- 

 try interests because there are less of them in our state, and, as a rule, they 

 seem to prefer to stay in woods and thickets, away from the habitations of 

 man. The gray fox seems to want to keep away from man's improved posses- 

 sions, his evil work consisting mainly in destroying beneficial birds and game." 

 In short " Good foxes are dead foxes !" 



Description of species. Rather smaller and shorter-legged than red fox. 

 Not subject to mealanism (black phase) as in the red species. Back a 

 coarse grizzle of black and white ; belly tawny ; cheeks and throat whitish ; 

 ears, sides of neck and legs reddish-yellow ; a black line along upper side of 

 tail. 



Measurements. Total length, 900 mm. (35^ in.) ; tail vertebrae, 260 

 ; hind foot, 125 (5). 



Genus Vulpes Richardson, Fauna Boreali Americana, 1829, vol. i, p. 83. 



Southeastern Red Fox. Vulpes fulvus (Desmarest). 



1820. Cants fulvus Desmarest, Mammalogie, vol. i, p. 203. 



1842. Vulpes fulvus De Kay, Zoology of New York, Mammalia, p. 44. 



Type locality. Virginia. 



Fauna! distribution. Canadian, transition and upper austral zones, south- 

 ern Maine to Minnesota (Great Plains), south in mountains to N. Carolina, 

 and in lowlands encroaching into western Tennessee and eastern Virginia ; 

 merging in Nova Scotia into V. fulvus rubricosa (Bangs) of which V. rubri- 

 cosa bangsi of Merriam, from Labrador (based on a young female !) appears 

 to be a synonym, and V. deletrix Bangs of Newfoundland would form another 

 subspecies, did not the arbitrary law of insular isolation overbalance the 

 physiological law of conspecific affinity. These rulings, of course, are subject 

 to the query discussed beyond, of the origin of Desmarest's type of fulvus. 



Distribution in Pa. and N. J. Nowhere wholly absent ; abundant in the 

 Canadian and transition zones ; locally rare in the upper austral of southern 

 N. J. In earlier colonial times unknown in the austral zone, its primitive 

 distribution being greatly altered by its introduction into austral habitat by 

 fox-hunting man and by the altered environment of our lowlands. Owing to 

 the importation of European red foxes into this country in early colonial 

 times, our east American red fox is probably a mongrel species to that extent, 

 claiming as we do that there was originally a specific difference between the 

 two. 



Records in Pa. Consult remarks under this heading in article above on 

 gray fox. Kalm in his "Travels," vol. i, 1770, p. 283, says "the Red Foxes 

 are very scarce here [Pa. & N. J.] : they are entirely the same with the 



