CHAPTER XII. 
FOXES. 
TuE varieties and even species of foxes are so great on 
the North American continent that I doubt much if they 
have ever been properly classified by the naturalist. Go 
where you will they are to be found. Of the commoner 
species, I may safely state that I have killed hundreds. 
So in the following I will allude only to the principal of 
them. For a long period I had resided in a part of North- 
ern Canada that probably supplies as many of those ex- 
tremely rare animals—the Black or Silver Fox—as any por- 
tion of the American continent, and during the entire length 
of my residence was constantly associated with trappers, 
fur-traders, et hoc genus omne,; so a few remarks on this 
scarce and valuable animal may not be out of place. 
The fabulous sum that a prime black fox skin is worth 
causes this animal to be universally sought after; the tawny 
redskin or the swarthy half-bred hunter, when he discovers 
the haunt of one of these beauties, never ceases day or night 
to ponder over schemes for his capture; the marten and 
mink traps are for a time neglected, and every artifice, ev- 
ery trick and ingenuity that ever entered trapper’s brain, 
is at once put into practice. Nor is this fox less wary 
than his confréres, but quite the reverse; and I believe in 
the current opinion that there is no animal more difficult 
to circumvent. Often of an evening I have listened to the 
broken English of the snake-eyed aborigines, or the curious 
patois of the Canadian habitant, recapitulating how they 
all but succeeded on such and such an occasion, or were re- 
