94 
ARCTIC FOX. 
valued his fingers would endeavour to take hold of the end attached to the 
staple.” 
Richardson says that notwithstanding the degree of intelligence which 
the anecdotes related by Captain Lyon show them to possess, they are 
unlike the red Fox in being extremely unsuspicious ; and instances are 
related of their standing by while the hunter is preparing the trap, and 
running headlong into it the moment he retires a few paces. Captain 
Lyon received fifteen from a single trap in four hours. The voice of the 
Arctic Fox is a kind of yelp, and when a man approaches their breeding- 
places they put their heads out of their burrows and bark at him, allowing 
him to come so near that they may easily be shot. 
They appear to have the power of decoying other animals within their 
reach, by imitating their voices. “ While tenting, we observed a Fox 
prowling on a hill side, and heard him for several hours afterwards in 
different places, imitating the cry of a brentgoose.” They feed on eggs, 
young birds, blubber, and carrion of any kind ; but their principal food 
seems to be lemmings of different species. 
Richardson thinks the “ brown variety,” as he calls it, the more common 
one in the neighbourhood of Behring’s Straits. He states that they breed 
on the sea coast, and chiefly within the Arctic circle, forming burrows in 
sandy spots, not solitary like the red Fox, but in little villages, twenty or 
thirty burrows being constructed adjoining to each other. He saw one of 
these villages on Point Turnagain, in latitude 68i°. Towards the middle 
of winter, continues our author, they retire to the southward, evidently in 
search of food, keeping as much as possible on the coast, and going much 
farther to the southward in districts where the coast line is in the direction 
of their march. Captain Parry relates that the Arctic Foxes, which were 
previously numerous, began to retire from Melville peninsula in November, 
and that by January few remained. “ Towards the centre of the continent, 
in latitude 65°, they are seen only in the winter, and then not in numbers ; 
they are very scarce in latitude 61°, and at Carlton House, in latitude 53°, 
only two were seen in forty years. On the coast of Hudson’s Bay, however, 
according to Hearne, they arrive at Churchill, in latitude 59°, about the 
middle of October, and afterwards receive reinforcements from the north- 
ward, until their numbers almost exceed credibility. Many are captured 
there by the hunters, and the greater part of the survivors cross the 
Churchill river as soon as it is frozen over, and continue their journey along 
the coast to Nelson and Severn rivers. In like manner they extend their 
migrations along the whole Labrador coast to the gulf of St. Lawrence. 
Most of those which travel far to the southward are destroyed by rapacious 
animals ; and the few which survive to the spring breed in their new quar 
