Quadrupeds. 7779 



children, nor will two whites have black or mulatto offspring. I do 

 not know whether I have explained my ideas on the subject clearly or 

 not : they are the result of my experience on a subject to which I have 

 given no small attention. I have often robbed fox dens, and have also 

 bred the animals, and the summing up of this part of my subject may 

 be thus made : like colours reproduce like, black and red being 

 origins ; the cross is the fruit of intermixture between these shades. 

 1 kept a pair of cross foxes in confinement at Slave Lake ; their off- 

 spring were all cross : I had only one litter when the bitch died. 



Foxes are very shy animals and difficult to tame ; indeed when old 

 they appear to pine away in confinement ; when young they are play- 

 ful, but at all times rather snappish. They are far from sociable, and 

 generally burrow alone, although it is not uncommon for the members 

 of one family to live together. 



The fox-burrow or den is often many yards in length, with various 

 ramifications and side galleries to it, in the centre of which an excava- 

 tion, rather wider than the passages, serves for the sleeping apartment ; 

 to this there are always two entrances, and often more. The den is 

 kept very clean, and in some dozens which 1 have opened I found 

 neither bones of animals nor offal of any kind. To dig out a fox a flat 

 piece of iron, called an eavth-chisel, is lied to a stout wooden handle ; 

 the trapper inserts a long slender pole of willow or other flexible wood 

 into the entrance, having stopped up any other that exists, to find the 

 direction in which the passage runs ; he then digs another hole and 

 inserts his pole, finding with its point whether any other passage exists, 

 and if so marking the direction. In this manner he proceeds till he 

 digs to where the fox is, who is generally killed in one of the side 

 galleries, or close to one of the closed entrances. This method of 

 killing a fox entails a large amount of labour, as it often takes a 

 whole day to unearth the animal. 



Of all the natural gifts of the fox the most remarkable is his ex- 

 quisite sense of smell. When the fox finds a piece of meat or fish he 

 almost invariably hides it, and returns to eat it at some future period : I 

 have remarked this trait even in cubs which I have reared in confine- 

 ment, and which used, previous to eating, to dig holes in the snow to 

 bury their food, pushing the snow with their noses to cover it. During 

 the commencement of summer he will lay up a store of the eggs of 

 wild fowl, for his winter's consumption ; these he deposits in holes 

 dug in the sand-bars of the river or in beds of moss, and at the expira- 

 tion of several months will, when pressed by want, visit his caches. 

 Even when there are several feet of snow on his deposit he will readily 



