440 CARNIVORES. 
climates the colour of this lynx is almost white, although usually of a dark grey 
tinged with chestnut, with the limbs darker than the body. The back and the 
upper part of the legs are mottled with darker blotches, and the tips of the hairs 
are white. 
The Canada lynx extends from Canada at least as far south as the Adirondack 
Mountains, near New York; and is the lowp cervier of the French Canadians. In 
the Adirondacks, where it is nowhere common, it preys, according to Dr. Hart 
Merriam, “upon the northern hare, and such other small mammals as it can catch, 
and upon the ruffed grouse and spruce partridge. It has also been known to 
devour pigs, lambs, and young fawns; but the accounts of its attacking full-grown 
deer are not to be credited. Its haunts are in the deep forests and bush districts, 
remote from the paths of man; and consequently it rarely intrudes upon the 
barn-yard. Its ordinary gait when in a hurry is a long gallop, like that of the 
hare, and it is said to swim well. The female commonly has two young at a 
birth, her lair being usually located in a cavern or hollow tree.” 
Mr. Nattrass states that this lynx when leaping over the ground, as it does in 
a series of successive bounds, with back arched, the tail so short as to be almost 
indiscernible, presents altogether a quaint, weird appearance, which has been 
described by many hunters and backwoodsmen as laughable and peculiar in the 
extreme. The same writer also relates an instance where a lynx, when hard 
pressed by dogs, took to the water and swam right across Lake Leman, of which 
the width is almost a mile. He likewise states that the lynx will feast upon the 
forsaken prey of the puma, which may account for the legends of its killing the 
larger kinds of deer; smaller deer fall, however, frequent victims to the lynx. 
Mr. Nattrass records a cross-breed between the lynx and the domestic cat. 
“The lynx,” he says, “is seldom hunted systematically, as are the deer, elk, 
bear, and other game animals, unless it be by professional hunters or trappers, 
who value him for his pelt. With them the usual method is to hunt him with 
dogs trained to follow the trail by scent. In other cases his track is followed 
through the snow, by the eye, by a party of hunters, who, when starting out, 
must be prepared to make a long, hard tramp of many hours, or possibly 
several days. I have known a party, who wanted a lynx badly, to follow the trail 
of one all day, returning home as darkness set in. They returned to the hunt next 
morning, took up the trail where they left it the night before, and followed it all 
day, and again the next day, till they finally trailed the beast to its lair, treed, 
and shot it.” 
aaa The next form of the American lynxes 1S known indifferently as 
the bay lynx, red cat, or American wild cat, and is the chat cervier of 
the French Canadians, and the F. rufa of those zoologists who regard it entitled to 
rank as a distinet species. In the typical form the fur is shorter and less abundant 
than that of the Canada lynx, and is of uniform reddish colour, while the tail appears 
to be more bushy. Its size is also somewhat inferior to that of the last-named 
kind. There is, however, a handsomer spotted variety of the bay lynx occurring 
in Texas and Southern California, which was formerly regarded as a distinct 
species (F. maculata); and a second from Washington and Oregon, distinguished 
by vertical dark streaks on the body, this variety having been named (F. fusciata). 
