38 
ZOOLOGY. 
there we often heard them at night hunting in packs, and yelping in chorus, apparently by their 
numbers surrounding, and by their cries confusing, their prey. 
During the summer the coyotes subsist in a great degree on grasshoppers, and we frequently 
saw them engaged in catching these insects. This they effect by springing with great quick¬ 
ness and bringing the fore paw down on them. They eat also mice, lizards, and frogs, and 
resemble so much in their diet, and in their timid, sneaking, thievish nature, the Digger 
Indian, that the hunters put them on an equality, and consider them in some way related to 
each, or at least make them equal objects of contempt and detestation. To call the “ Digger” a 
dog, is, in the hunter’s estimation, to elevate him; to compare him with a coyote is to degrade ; 
one scarcely knows which. 
If one can content himself with so ignoble game, the coyote hunted on horseback affords very 
good sport. 
While our party was crossing from Hamilton, on Feather river, to the Sacramento, Mr. 
Anderson and myself took a wide sweep to the right of the trail in hope to get a shot at an 
antelope or deer. We saw no game whatever, except coyotes, if, indeed, they can he called 
game; and my companion, a keen sportsman who had often hunted the large wolf on 
the prairies of Texas, proposed that we should have a steeple chase. I assented, and we 
were soon racing over the prairie, each in chase of a wolf, at a speed that brought them 
ere long under our horses’ feet. We found considerable difference in the speed of different 
individuals ; but, generally, they are readily overhauled by a good horse, and, by a shot 
from the saddle, may he killed without difficulty. 
The color of the coyote, in most localities, is a light brownish yellow, with a very few black 
hairs along the hack ; we saw, however, in the Des Chutes basin, some which were larger and 
darker, as was the skin of one from Yreka, which I brought home. 
We several times saw large numbers of burrows, about the size of those of the badger, closely 
set together, and occupying, perhaps, a quarter or half acre. These had evidently been formed 
by an animal of considerable size which seemed to have abandoned them entirely. Bartie, our 
guide, informed me that these were the breeding places of the coyotes, where the females go, at 
certain seasons, to bring forth their young. How true this may be, I cannot say ; but the 
coyote seemed the only animal inhabiting the country in sufficient numbers to form such 
colonies. 
The cry of the prairie wolf is precisely that of the Indian dog of the west—a sharp bark, 
followed by a succession of yelps running into each other, and ending in a long-drawn quaver¬ 
ing howl, at times indescribably melancholy. While camping on a tributary of Pit river, in a 
region infested with hostile Indians, I was one evening fishing for trout alone, a mile or more 
from camp, and, detained by the fascination of unusually good sport, I still lingered till the 
stars began to appear, when a coyote, coming to the top of a ledge of trap rock on the opposite 
side of the stream, favored me with a succession of howls so mournful and sinister that I was 
fain to look upon it as an evil omen, and gathering irp my fish and groping my way back to 
camp was quite disposed to congratulate myself on arriving there without adventure. 
VULPES MACROURUS, Baird. 
Great Tailed Fox. 
Baird, General Report Mammals, 1857, 130. 
The red fox inhabits all parts of Oregon and California, but I suspect is less abundant in the 
central and southern portions of California than further north. At least we met with the 
