THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
the small quarry. All the larger cats and wolves are its 
enemies in the wilderness, and the skill in avoiding them 
inherited from innumerable ancestors serves it well when in 
civilized lands the fox finds troops of dogs set upon its 
track. 
Standard works are supplemented by admirable essays on the 
American fox by Thoreau, Burroughs, Lottridge, Robinson, 
and others who know him well; none is more complete and 
intimate than the history given by Mr. Cram,™ *°° who asserts 
that in New England, at least, the foxes in cultivated districts 
are far more highly developed in intellect than are those of the 
outlying parts, or than were the foxes of a century ago. They 
are the most bold, skillful, and inveterate of poultry thieves, 
and will sometimes take as many as “thirty pullets in a single 
night”; and often half or more of the booty of such a raid will 
be found in a pile in some hiding place, which goes to show that 
the foxes of all cold regions probably store surplus food. In 
return for levying upon his chickens (or, in Europe, upon the 
pheasants and other treasures of the gamekeeper) the animal 
aids the farmer by destroying numberless rats, mice, gophers, 
and similar pests. 
There is in California another species of fox, — the big-eared; and 
Alaska is said to have two more, but we know little about them. On the 
Plains scampers the kit fox, now becoming rare, which is only two thirds 
the size of the red fox, though nearly as tall, and frosted red buff in color. 
It frequents the prairie-dog towns, feeds largely on these and associated 
rodents and birds; is an expert burrower, and very alert and wary, to which 
it owes its safety rather than to its reputed excessive swiftness. 
Very different from any of the foregoing is the gray fox, now 
altogether a denizen of Dixie, having disappeared 
from most of the North where the red fox holds its 
own so well. This seems to be the result mainly of a com- 
petition in brains, the gray fox not having the quick-witted 
204 
Gray Fox. 
