formerly sold for twenty-five dollars, though I believe they now bring
only about five dollars.

The black or silver-gray fox is the rarest of all, and its skin the
most valuable. The Indians used to estimate it equal to forty beaver
skins. The great fur companies seldom collect in a single season more
than four or five skins at any one post. Most of those of the American
Fur Company come from the head-waters of the Mississippi. One of the
younger Audubons shot one in northern New York. The fox had been seen
and fired at many times by the hunters of the neighborhood, and had
come to have the reputation of leading a charmed life, and of being
invulnerable to anything but a silver bullet. But Audubon brought her
down (for it was a female) on the second trial. She had a litter of
young in the vicinity, which he also dug out, and found the nest to
hold three black and four red ones, which fact settled the question
with him that black and red often have the same parentage, and are in
truth the same species.

The color of this fox, in a point-blank view, is black, but viewed at
an angle it is a dark silvergray, whence has arisen the notion that the
black and the silver-gray are distinct varieties. The tip of the tail
is always white.

In almost every neighborhood there are traditions of this fox, and it
is the dream of young sportsmen; but I have yet to meet the person who
has seen one. I should go well to the north, into the British
Possessions, if I were bent on obtaining a specimen.

One more item from the books. From the fact that in the bone caves in
this country skulls of the gray fox are found, but none of the red, it