THE GRAY FOX. 



551 



At the same place I chanced to glance out of the window one 

 (juiet Sunday morning \y\wn the hounds were baying in the dis- 

 tance, just in time to see a gray fox trotting up a woodland path. 

 It stopped about 30 yards away and listened, then made a detour 

 to avoid the house, stopping several more times near by, apparently 

 oblivious to my presence, although in the meantime I had quietly 

 left the house and was in full view of the animal. It seemed to 

 have used that path before, for it made for a place where there 

 was a break in the close barbed wire fence, then crossed the road, 

 sprang upon the rail fence, ran along its top for a rod, stopping 

 to listen again, and then, as the hounds were coming nearer, it 

 went on across a meadow at an easy trot. 



Later in the year, when the spring rains had swollen the creek, 

 I set a steel trap at the end of a log which spanned the current, 

 placing some brush so that any animal crossing the bridge would 

 have to leave it at the spot where the trap was placed. Next morn- 

 ing a large adult male gray fox had been caught in the trap. He 

 first tried to spring away at my approach, but then showed fight. 

 At about the same time, the middle of March, some boys in the 

 neighborhood dug five cubs from a den in the woods, and kept 

 them as pets for some time. 



The food of the gray fox consists of any sort of small mam- 

 mals or birds the animals can capture, supplemented by insects, 

 frogs, fishes, snakes, carrion and sometimes fruits and nuts. The 

 animals sometimes rob poultry yards, but their retiring habits and 

 rarity make them lesser offenders in this respect than the red foxes. 

 Their bark resembles that of the red fox, but has less volume. 



Genus Vulpes Frisch. 



Vulpes Frisch, Das Natur-system vierfiiss. Thiere, Tabl. Gen., 

 1775. 



Dental Formula.— I, f^f; C, Pm, M, 1e| = 42. 



Generic eharacters. — Size medium; upper incisors lobed ; pupil 

 of eye elliptical; fur soft and full all over, the tail being covered 

 with the same kind of hair on all sides; skull with slender, elon- 

 gated rostrum. 



The genus Vulpes is found in the 'northern hemisphere, both in 

 the old world and the new. IMore than 20 species and subspecies 

 are found in North Ainerica, only one of them occurring in Indiana. 



