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AMERICAN BLACK OR SILVER FOX. 
specimens are bluish-gray, and many are tinged with a cinereous coloui on 
the sides : it perhaps is most commonly obtained with, parts of its fur 
hoary, the shiny black coat being thickly interspersed with white or 
silvery-blue tipped hairs. 
According to Sir John Richardson, a greater number than four or five 
of these Poxes is seldom taken in a season at any one p'o'st in the fur 
countries, though the hunters no sooner find out the haunts ol one than 
they use every art to catch it. From what he observed, Sir John does not 
think this Fox displays more cunning in avoiding a snare than the red one, 
but the rarity of the animal, and the eagerness of the hunters to take it, 
make them think it peculiarly shy. 
This animal appears to be as scarce in northern Europe as in America ; 
but we do not mean by this to be understood as considering the European 
Black Fox identical with ours. 
The Black or Silver Fox is sometimes killed in Labrador, and on the 
Magdeleine Islands, and occasionally — very rarely— in the mountainous 
parts of Pennsylvania and the wilder portions of the northern counties of 
New York, where, however, Pennant’s marten is generally called the 
“ Black Fox,” by the hunters and farmers. 
It gives us pleasure to render our thanks to the Hon. Hudson's Bay 
Company for a superb female Black or Silver-gray Fox which was procured 
for us, and sent to the Zoological Gardens in London alive, where J. "W . 
Audubon was then making figures of some of the quadrupeds brought from 
the Arctic regions of our continent for this work. Having drawn this 
beautiful animal, which was at the time generously tendered us, but 
thinking it should remain in the Zoological Gardens, as we have no such 
establishment in America, J. W. Audubon declined the gift in favor of the 
Zoological Society, in whose interesting collection we hope it still exists. 
When shall we have a Zoological Garden in the United States? 
This variety of the Fox does not differ in its propensities from the red 
Fox or the cross Fox, and its extraordinary cunning is often equalled by 
the tricks of these sly fellows. 
The white tip at the end of the tail appears to be a characteristic of the 
Silver-gray Fox, and occurs in every specimen we have seen. 
It is stated in Morton’s New England Canaan (p. 19), that the skin of 
the Black Fox was considered by the Indians, natives of that part of the 
colonies, as equivalent to forty beaver skins ; and when offered and 
accepted by their kings, it was looked upon as a sacred pledge of recon- 
ciliation. 
The present species has been seen “mousing” in the meadows, near 
Ipswich, Massachusetts, as we were informed by the late William Oakes, 
