22 



COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



Red 



Cross 



or 

 Patch 



Silver 



{Red. — Red above and white below, with dark points. 

 Bastard. — Red above and dark below and on the neck, 

 with darker points. 



Poor Cross. — ^Mostly red and dark as above with a silver 

 patch down the back and over the shoulders and 

 hips. 



I Good Cross or Ricsty Silver. — Slightly red on the sides, 

 neck and ears, dark below and silvery over 

 the back, shoulders and rump. 



Silver or Ldght Silver. — Silvery all over, except possibly 



the neck; dark below and white only on the 



tip of the tail. 

 Silver Black or Dark Silver. — ^Black all over, except 

 ■! the tip of the tail and the silvery hairs on the 



hips and forehead. 

 Black. — ^Pure black all over, except the tip of the taU, 



with, perhaps, dark silvery hairs only discernible 



on close examination. 



No two foxes are exactly alike in colour unless they be black. 

 Three silver foxes examined had no white tips on their tails and others 

 had only a half dozen white hairs — yet the white tip is one of the 

 marks of identification for the species. Others had white patches 

 on the legs or breast, while the rest of the colouring was almost pure 

 black. 



A silver fox when mated with a pure red usually produces silver 

 pups in two crosses. If the first cross produces all red pups, two 

 methods of breeding may be adopted : 



(a) A male and a female pup may be crossbred, producing, on 

 the average, one silver pup to three reds. 



(b) A red pup may be bred to the silver parent, producing, on 

 the average, 50 per cent red pups. 



It is a more unusual occiu-rence to secure a blend or intermediate 

 colour from crossing a silver and a red. By breeding the pups for 

 four generations to a silver, the red colour is eliminated from the pelage 

 markings. The segregation of the red and silver colour appears to 

 be very common in many localities, but, in others, the roan or inter- 

 mediate form of colour is produced quite frequently, the parent char- 

 acters blending and the hybrid usually breeding true. 



In this connection it will be of interest to quote from a letter 

 dated August 2, 1912, received from Professor W. Bateson of Cambridge 



