4738 THE ZooLoGIsT—JANUARY, 1876. 
white or gray. Its coat, which is wonderfully soft, forms an article 
of commerce with the Hudson’s Bay Company. It is considerably 
smaller in bulk than the polar hare, which, when grown up, gene- 
rally weighs about eight pounds and three-quarters. Its flesh is 
no delicacy. Barentz, and since him several other Arctic travellers, 
however, found it enjoyable, and we (Pansch and Copeland) did 
our best to eat. it. The Arctic fox has, with but few exceptions, 
none of the cunning attributed to our own Reynard. At least our 
recollections of it (except in one or two cases) are of a most harm- 
less character. During the winter we succeeded in catching some 
after the manner of the Esquimaux. Once one was taken out of 
the trap, and laid down for dead, but after a time it sprung up and 
rushed away. For the yourg ducks, for which it has a great weak- 
ness, the fox is a bitter enemy. It lives upon anything it can get 
in winter, even shell-fish and other salt-water produce which is 
brought by the tide on to the strand-ice. In the summer lemmings 
seem to be its chief food. Nearly the whole of the winter and 
spring we kept some prisoners in the engine-rooms; in such close 
proximity to the coals they all turned black. Two of them died of 
tubercles on the lungs. A beautiful gray fox had to be garotted in 
the cabin for refractoriness; another was set free, and the last 
deserted the cage that we had made it aud put upon the ice near the 
ship: this desertion, which was brought about by the melting and 
falling down of the block of ice on which the cage stood, and which 
we all witnessed from the deck, had something particularly comical 
about it. The fox, which had almost waned away to a skeleton, 
began to stretch himself, then to stick out his bushy tail like a 
broom, wriggled his lanky body into a pool of water, and lastly, as 
elegantly as a dancing master, and as if longing for liberty, started 
off without deigning to cast another look at the ship. 
The European fox shuns mankind, but the Greenland fox seeks 
man’s society, in perfect innocence and without any suspicion, for 
it hopes to profit by him. It is the first, after a fortunate day’s 
huiiting, to show its astonishment and also hasten to enjoy the 
spoil, as well as steal a reindeer ham from the sledge in the night 
and carry it away. It accompanies him on hunting and sledge 
journeys at a respectful distance, and employs his time of rest in 
visiting, opening and plundering the sack of provisions. An ice- 
bound ship it watches with great favour, for there is always some 
lucky chance bringing him some opportunity of profit, and things 
