94 BIG GAME OF [NORTH AMEJJICA. 



Although the machinery for the enforcement of game 

 laws, generally speaking, is miserably inefficient, I am glad 

 to believe that any such improvident and wanton destruc- 

 tion would not be tolerated in any civilized jjart of the 

 American Continent to-day. 



In the foregoing sketch of the Caribou — the Reindeer of 

 America — while adhering strictly to zoological facts, I have 

 endeavored to make the paper as interesting to naturalists, 

 scientific and practical, as I hope it may prove to sports- 

 men, who have had many ojjportunities of learning, amid 

 the wild haunts of our large game animals, minute and use- 

 ful ^particulars beyond the reach of the mere scientist, whose 

 researches have been confined to books. 



I met recently with an article classifying black and silver- 

 gray Foxes as distinct species, as well as distinct from the 

 large red Fox, which, if commonly accepted history is cor- 

 rect, is not a native of America, but has descended from 

 English ancestors, imported by Sir Guy Carleton in the 

 Colonial j)eriod of the United States, m'Iio had found that 

 the small, grayish-colored native Fox had neither the 

 speed nor endurance to hold his own before a pack of Fox- 

 hounds. From the fact that one hundred and fifty years 

 ago there was a greater number of black and silver-gray 

 Foxes in the Canadian x)art of this continent than red ones, 

 I was always of the oiDinion that they were distinct in 

 species from the red variety of a later date. 



My faith, however, in the above theory met with a some- 

 what staggering shock a few years ago, when a boy in an 

 adjacent township found a pure black, a pronounced silver- 

 gray, and four red Fox i^uppies in the den of a she-Fox of 

 the real red variety. In color, the three varieties were as 

 strongly marked as possible. This strange result may not, 

 however, shake the theory of distinctness of species; but 

 possibly might be accounted for — as such incidents are 

 explainable — as difference of color and other peculiarities 

 are accounted for, in the frequent antagonisms existing in 

 one litter of the young of the canine, or rather domestic dog, 

 species. The black and silver-gray alluded to were kept alive 



