Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/461

Rh all the young would be called "black," although the head and shoulders are brownish, and the tail is tipped with white.

In this connection it is to be noted that Audubon and Bachman had once a mother and a litter of seven young foxes; the former was nearly jet black, with the tip of the tail white; three of the young were said to be black, the other four red; one of the blackest was kept alive for six months, and as it grew older the less it became like the "black," and the more like the "cross" fox; whence they conclude that both the "cross" and "black" foxes are mere varieties of the "red;" in this opinion Mr. J. A. Allen concurs.

But there is something more to be said of our little fox and its mother: a closer examination of the former shows that there are two kinds of hair corresponding to the two colors; the body and tail, and upper parts of the legs, are thickly covered with a kind of soft wool, of a smoke-color, but the head presents longer and reddish-colored hairs; and these same hairs are scattered over the body, more thickly in front than behind; the two kinds are as thick brush-wood and saplings; under the microscope they are even more unlike; for the "wool" is crinkled, and its texture very transparent; the pith seeming to be divided by transverse partitions into a single row of nearly square spaces; the hairs, on the other hand, are straight, and two or three times as thick, and their texture much more dense, apparently from a crowding of the partitions and interspaces; and one thing more, the hairs are reddish only as far as they project above the wool, the deeper portions, like the wool, being smoke-colored. Now, the same is the case in the old fox, with this difference, that the hairs are so long and so numerous as to completely hide the woolly coat, and so give their own color to the animal; the wool presents the same appearance under the microscope as in the young one, and seems to be little if any larger, but the hairs are at least ten times as thick at their base, and taper thence gradually to the tip. We may easily imagine, then, not only that in some cases the long hairs themselves might be black throughout, but also that, as in the case mentioned by Audubon, an increase of the number of reddish-tipped hairs during growth might convert an apparently black fox into a red one.

Finally, it is certain that, were the old fox to lose her hairs and retain only the wool, she would be as black as her young, excepting, perhaps, upon the head.

After the color, the next most striking difference between the old and young foxes is the form of the head: that of the former is remarkable for its length, and for the total lack of forehead, the