VULI’ES VULGARIS PENNSYLVANICUS. 
45 
VULPES VULGARIS PENNSYLVANICUS (Bodd.) Cones. 
Fox; Red Fox; Cross Fox; Silver Fox; Black Fox. 
The common Fox is a tolerably abundant resident in the “ North 
Woods,” and its short bark is often heard, after nightfall, by parties 
encamped about our lakes. 
He is both nocturnal and diurnal in habits, and preys upon skunks, 
woodchucks, muskrats, hares, rabbits, squirrels, mice, and small birds 
and eggs. He is a well-known and much-dreaded depredator of the 
poultry-yard, destroying, with equal alacrity, turkeys, ducks, geese, 
hens, chickens, and doves ; and has been known to make off with 
young lambs. He will also eat carrion, and even fish, and is said to 
be fond of ripe grapes and strawberries. 
The cunning of the Fox is proverbial. Wily, crafty, and sagacious, 
to a degree almost beyond credibility, he defies the superior skill and 
intelligence of man, and meets, with shrewd manoeuvre and subtle 
stratagem, all attempts at his extermination. He lives and thrives 
and multiplies in our very midst, and is as common in many of the 
thickly settled portions of the State as in the remotest depths of the 
primeval forests. 
He is hunted both for pleasure and profit, and for the gratification 
of a malicious spite that seems to be inherent in man for his destruc- 
tion. He is trapped for where his presence is suspected, hounded 
when his foot-prints are seen on the snow, dug out when found in 
his subterranean burrow, and shot at when surprised at any of his 
tricks, from the first hour of his youthful gambols till the time that he 
finally succumbs before man’s combined and persistent efforts to- 
ward his annihilation. Nevertheless, his race survives, and I have 
yet to be convinced that his numbers have undergone any very ma- 
terial diminution during the last hundred years. 
The influence of natural selection in developing hereditary habits 
for the protection of the species is well exemplified in this animal, for 
he seems familiar, from earliest infancy, with the multifarious contri- 
