No matter how far north its range, the fox never turns white in winter. Another curious fact about this animal is that the skin, when viewed under the microscope, exhibits a structure indicating that the ancestors of the species were apparently clothed with scales instead of hair; thus affording important testimony to the view that mammals are the direct descendants of reptiles. Unlike jackals and wolves, the fox is a more or less solitary animal, living for the greater part of the year alone, or in company with the vixen, as the female is called; the latter name being merely the west country pronunciation of _fixen_, which may be the Saxon plural of _fix_. Chiefly nocturnal in their habits, foxes may take up their residence either in holes, or “earths,” dug by themselves, in ravines or clefts among rocks, or amid coarse grass and bushes. The young, usually from five to seven in number, have slaty grey coats quite different from their parents. Although foxes are sad enemies to the poultry-yard and the game-covert, it should be remembered that they are death on field-mice and rats. THE BROWN BEAR (_Ursus arctus_) With the exception of the hyænas and the civets, all the more important families of land Carnivora are represented in northern Europe; the wild cat and the lynx doing duty for the _Felidæ_, the wolf and the fox for the _Canidæ_, the pine-marten, glutton, and otter, together with several smaller species, for the _Mustelidæ_, and the bear, or brown bear, as it is commonly called, in order to distinguish it from its relatives--white, grey, or black--for the _Ursidæ_. It is further noteworthy that, with the exception of the wild cat, all these animals are either common to the northern portions of the two hemispheres or are represented in North America by species very closely allied to their European prototypes. The bear is one of the undoubtedly circumpolar species, for although distinct names have been given to its American representatives, with the exception of the grisly bear (_Ursus horribilis_), which is specifically different, all these are obviously nothing more than local forms or races of a single variable and widely distributed species.