36 
much more abundant than the blue. According to the Eskimo the two varieties inter- 
breed, and the young are sometimes dark and both parents white, and vice versa. During 
the winter months tney congregate in considerable numbers about any carcass, especially 
a whale, and get themselves thoroughly begrimed with grease”. 
The foxes are said to follow the polar bears in order to benefit by 
anything remaining of the seals killed by the bears. 
The Arctic fox, like other foxes, has the habit of mounting knolls, 
and crossing and running along low ridges. They are surprisingly un- 
suspicious and will blunder into an unconcealed trap about as readily as a 
hare. At times they are very bold, especially in winter. Kumlien (1879, 
p. 49) writes: 
"During the winter they often fare badly, and become quite impudent when pressed 
by hunger, even coming upon the schooner’s decks at night. They were a source of annoy- 
ance as well as amusement to us around our observatory. We were not the fortunate 
possessors of enough glass to let the light in through the wall of snow that surrounded our 
tent, so we had recourse to oiled sheeting stretched over the aperture, borrowing the idea 
from the Eskimo window of seal intestine. But as we had no dogs about our snowhouse, 
the foxes became so bold during the long cold nights of winter that they often came and 
sat around the stovepipe that projected through the roof of the hut. Our cloth windows 
had to be repaired very often, as they would tear them down and eat them for the oil the 
cloth contained.” 
Hantzsch (1913, p. 153) tells of a fox entering his camp at Nettilling 
lake on June 11, 1910, coming quite close to the tents and tracking some 
young dogs kept in a tent-kennel. David Wark, manager of the Hudson’s 
Bay Company’s post at Amacljuak bay, informed the writer that on June 
8, 1922, a fox entered a dog kennel near the post and ran off with a very 
small pup. 
The change from winter to summer coat occurs in early June. The 
animals begin turning white in late September. The winter pelage is 
complete between October 10 and 15, except, perhaps, in the case of a 
comparatively few individuals. 
The proportion of blue foxes increases north w T ard and, it is said, in 
northern Ellesmere and Greenland the blue variety predominates. 
Forty fox skulls from southern Baffin island were brought back by 
the MacMillan expedition and were reported upon by Allen and Copeland 
(1924, pp. 7-13) as follows: 
"Those of the same sex show more or less variation in size, length of nasals, and 
degree of flatness of the forehead. They resemble the Point Barron and northern Alaska 
specimens in their slightly shorter nasals and blunter, thickened postorbital processes as 
compared with the Labrador form, ungava. As a rule, however, the lower anterior pre- 
molars are not in contact, but very slightly spaced as in the latter. All the characters 
used in separating the different races are variable and of slight average value only. Merriam 
refers to this race a single specimen in the United States National Museum from Cumber- 
land island, in eastern Baffin land, remarking that the lower premolars are somewhat 
larger than those of Alaskan skulls. In the MacMillan series, however, there is apparently 
very little actual difference in the size of teeth as compared with specimens from northern 
Alaska, but the lower premolars are very slightly spaced instead of being in close contact. 
The weight of an adult male from Bowdoin harbour is recorded on the label as 6 
pounds; four others weigh from 5 to 9 pounds, and the average of the five is a little over 7.” 
The present WTiter obtained very few specimens of skins, but did 
acquire a large series of perfect skulls from Eskimo trappers of Cumberland 
sound and elsewhere. 
