218 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
the present century, when M. Palisot de Beauvais, in a 
paper read before the French Institute, (an abstract of 
which was afterwards given in the Bulletin de la Societe 
Philomathique,) first accurately distinguished between 
the two species. Since that time they have been almost 
uniformly regarded as distinct; and although much 
confusion still exists with respect to the American 
Foxes in general, the present has rarely been con- 
founded with any other. 
The distinctive characters of the Red, as compared 
with the European, Fox, have been so well defined by 
Dr. Richardson in his Fauna Boreali-Americana that 
we cannot do better than give them in his own words. 
" On comparing," he says, " a fine specimen of the 
English Fox with an American Red Fox, each were 
observed to have dark markings on the sides of the 
muzzle, posterior parts of the ears, and fore part of the 
legs ; the tails of both have an intermixture of black 
hairs, and are tipped with white. The Red Fox, how- 
ever, differs in its long and very fine fur, and in the 
brilliancy of its colours. Its cheeks are rounder, its 
nose thicker, shorter, and more truncated. Its eyes 
are nearer to each other. Its ears are shorter, the hair 
on its legs is a great deal longer, and its feet are much 
more woolly beneath, the hair extending beyond the 
claws, which are shorter than those of the European 
Fox. In short the Red Fox differs from the European 
one in nearly the same characters that distinguish the 
gray American Wolf from the Pyrenean one — in the 
breadth and capacity of its feet for running on the 
snow, the quantity of long hair clothing the back part 
of the cheeks, which in conjunction with the shorter 
ears and nose give the head a more compact appear- 
ance. The Red Fox has a much finer brush than the 
European one, and is altogether a larger animal." 
