14 GILPIN ON THE MAMMALS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



they never bred. They seemed slenderer than the red foxes, \nth 

 longer legs, but I have never seen any specific difference between 

 them and the rest. They are found in the same litter. The white 

 traces on the flank and white tip of tail are common to all, and had 

 they power to found a race it would have been more numerous,. 

 The hunters tell you he is a solitary animal, ranging by himself, 

 of a different manner and habit. But carrying twenty pounds on his 

 back he is invested with a romantic interest ; he is like a criminal, 

 with blood money on him ; he scarcely shows his brush but there 

 is a general commotion ; traps are set on his beat, poison, dogs and 

 men beset his path. The fortunate captor carries his spoils to 

 Halifax, and sometimes secures twenty-five pounds for a skin. 

 Absorbed in the stock of the London dealers, it reappears at the 

 great Leipsic fairs to be contended for by a Russian prince, Hun- 

 garian noble, or a Chinese mandarin, where they have reached 

 the incredible price of forty or fifty pounds. The London pubhc 

 were amazed at the large prices attached to these skins at the Great 

 Exhibition. With their proneness to nigritism the red fox abounds 

 in our Province ; they keep cover by day, hunting at night. When 

 seen on the open by daylight, he exhibits every mark of caution, 

 stopping, snuffing the air, crouching down, glancing on every side, 

 then advancing, waving his tail from side to side. By-times again 

 he allows an approach without the slightest fear. A young girl 

 coming down the Granville Mountain captured a fox on the road, 

 tied its legs with her garters, put it into her basket and fetched it 

 home. I know another to have been stalked in open day and shot, 

 without the slightest precaution. Doubtless it was this habit in 

 the fox that caused the ancients to say he was affected by epilepsy. 

 He is a bitter and untiring thief, taking the goose from her nest 

 one night and returning for the eggs the next. He is accused of 

 killing lambs, and justly, as I have known him to have been seen 

 pursuing sheep with full cry and breast erect like a hound. When 

 these imported dainties are not within his reach he contents himself 

 with wild eggs, small birds, hares, mice, and even shell fish and 

 fresh water clams, as the margins of our inland streams quartered 

 up in every du-ection by his tracks attest. BetAveen tAro or three 

 thousand skins are annually exported still, though theii' numbers are 

 sadly dimmishing. The red fox skins of Prince Edward Island, 



