CARNIVORA 227 



the habit of hunting in packs, when even man is not safe from them. 

 Especially from northern Europe come gruesome accounts of their 

 attacks upon travellers, and wolves killed ten persons in India in i895. 34 



Foxes do considerable good in the destruction of injurious rodents 

 and some harm in the destruction of useful birds, occasional lambs and 

 poultry, In one fox lair were found remains of 76 short-eared owls, 

 several grouse, black-game, partridges, ducks, curlews, plovers, lambs, 

 rats and voles, 35 all to the discredit of the fox except the rats and 

 voles. Of the contents of four pellets of the red fox, 90 per cent was 

 mouse fur, representing 10 or 12 field mice, with a small feather and 

 the seeds and skin of an apple. 36 Bailey and Fisher say that the normal 

 food of foxes consists chiefly of rodents. 37 In southern New Mexico 

 the Arizona gray fox (Urocyon cinere oar gent ens scotti) is very fond 

 of juniper berries and pinyon nuts, which it obtains by climbing the 

 trees. 38 "In choice of food the gray foxes are almost as omnivorous as 

 the coon. Various fruits form the bulk of their food in summer and 

 part of it in winter, while a great variety of small game, beetles, grass- 

 hoppers, maggots, mammals, birds and some poultry fall prey to them 

 during the year. . . . Mice, wood rats, ground squirrels, rabbits and 

 various small rodents are eaten when obtainable." 3 " a One stomach (U. 

 c. scotti) contained a mockingbird and another contained Perognathus. 

 Excreta of the Cascade Mountain red fox (Vulpes cascadensis) "in- 

 dicated that the foxes were subsisting mainly on insects and fruit, the 

 remains of huckleberries, leaves and other vegetation." 39 The fondness 

 of foxes for grapes is proverbial. Henshaw reported that on Santa 

 Cruz Island the foxes were feeding principally on insects, but were 

 also attacking wild birds. 40 Introduced into Australia, a new environ- 

 ment, foxes are said to be destructive to native animals. 41 



Fox farming began in about 1887 in an experimental way. Prime 

 furs of some kinds of foxes bring high prices, which, together with 

 the comparative ease with which they may be handled in captivity, has 



w F.C.K., Amer. Naturalist, xxxi, 77-78, 1897. 



35 Fisher, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 1894, p. 225, citing Adair. 



36 Seton, Food of the red fox, Journ. Mammalogy, I, 140, 1920. 



87 Bailey, Farmers' Bull, No. 335, 1908. Fisher, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 

 1908, p. 190. 



38 Bailey, Animal life of Carlsbad Cavern, p. 95, 1928. 

 ~* Bailey, N. Amer. Fauna, No. 25, pp. 180-181, 1905. 



39 Taylor and Shaw, Mammals and birds of Mount Rainier National Park, p. 43, 

 1927. 



Henshaw, Kept, of Chief of Engineers, U. S. Dept. War, 1876, p. 526. 

 41 LeSouef, The fox menace and its effect on our native animals, Bull. Zool. Soc., 

 xxvn, 69-71, 1924, as cited in Journ. Mammalogy, v, 272, 1924. 



