The Arctic fox is smaller than ours; even the soles of his feet are covered with fur, like those of the hare, and he is altogether more thickly clothed. He has often been supposed to be pied in colour, but this is only in process of turning to the hue of winter. He is in these climates a much more gregarious animal, and several families live in the same earth. Bishop Heber mentions one in India, which feeds chiefly on field-mice and white ants, and this probably is the species of which the natives say, that he can turn nine times within the space of his own length. He is about half the size of the European. Much valuable fur is derived both from European and American foxes, where there is a great variety of colour, not depending on temperature. In Ireland there is a small animal called a fox, which does not eat flesh, but contents itself with vegetables, and is so perfectly harmless, that it roams about, unmolested even by dogs. HYÆNAS. There cannot be a much more uninteresting animal than the hard-hided, knock-kneed Hyæna, which is pre-eminently African, although he is found in the East; having, according to the opinion of some naturalists, migrated thither in the wake of caravans. He has a ferocious, ill-natured look, yet the first impression made by his appearance can only be expressed by the word "sneaking." He is of a tawny colour, more or less dusky till it approaches black, and is generally spotted, or striped. He has a mane continued all along the spine; his ears are long and erect; he is digitigrade, his claws are strong, and not retractile; he possesses a gland which sends forth a disagreeable odour, and his eyes have a pupil which is contracted at the top, and round at the bottom, which gives them a singular expression. The great peculiarity of form in the Hyæna is the disproportionate smallness of his hind quarters; besides which, the vertebræ of his neck very often become stiffened, in consequence of the strain put upon them by the powerful muscles of that part, and of the jaws. So firm is the hold which they take, that nothing will make them leave what they have once seized. They devour bones as well as muscles, rejecting only hoofs, horns, and skull; and this power must have existed in former ages, for in the caves which they inhabited, and into which they dragged their prey, their fossil remains are found with those of gigantic mastodons, etc., on which their teeth had made impression. This stiffness of the neck has caused many to imagine that it was composed of one joint only, and led the Arabs to make Hyænas the symbols of obstinacy.