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black,or nearly so, with a broadly white tip. As to the coloring 
of his head and body, I could not make sure, because of the dim 
light and intervening screen of branches. 
A conductor on the Lexington-Concord branch of the Boston 
and Maine R. R. who hunts Foxes with Hounds every autumn assured 
me last year that he and his frignds had repeatedly started a 
Black or Silver Gray Fox not far to the northward of us and had 
occasionally driven it into our woods. He has known of its 
presence in this region for several years past. Without .ouch 
doubt it was the same that I saw. My second observation above 
referred to was by ear alone — oh the evening of May 19 when 
as Gilbert and I were sitting in the parlor at the farm-house 
we heard the creature begin !, barking n . When we opened the front 
door the hoarse, gas^ping, throaty sounds seemed to come from 
very near at hand and apparently from the run just across the 
field in front of the house. As I listened to them they 
impressed me deeply by their weird, uncanny quality. Some were 
subdued and husky, others rang out loud and startling and had 
an agonized expression, suggesting intense fear or pain. Yet 
they varied but little in other respects being closely alike 
in form. They reminded me most of the choking sound of a steam 
exhaust and were wholly unlike the barking of dogs of any breed. 
FaijJ^Shrim^ I n the days of my early youth a deep hollow in Dr. 
Wyman’s place on Sparks Street, Cambridge, always abounded, when 
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