Among those Carnivora which are able to accommodate themselves to the severest climates, I may mention the Foxes. These animals attire themselves, under the Polar latitudes, in a fur of sufficient thickness to endure the intense cold they are required to support; and this fur is esteemed among the most precious varieties, under the names of Isatis skin, White Fox, Black, Blue, and Tricoloured Foxskins. The shades vary according to Reynard's habitat, his age, and also the season; they correspond in like manner to the differences of race, but not to the differences of species. The most valuable skins are obtained from those foxes which belong to very cold countries; and it seems that as they recede from a certain latitude, they lose their value. "Some Blue Foxes were killed by our hunters," says Madame Léonie d'Aunet, "which were stunted and ugly. The Spitzbergen foxes do not in any respect resemble the foxes of Iceland or Siberia, whose fur is so beautiful and in such high repute. That they may be thoroughly protected from the cold, they do not wear upon their bodies a fur so much as several thick folds or layers of very thick hair, so intermingled and threaded that it is rather a mattress than a coat of fur. Moreover, instead of being of a somewhat tawny colour, like the Iceland foxes, they are of an ashen-gray. Their skin, nevertheless, is excellently adapted for making carpets." I see no intermediaries between the small Carnivora we have just passed in review, and the formidable tyrant of the icy Deserts, the Polar or Marine Bear (_Ursus marinus_), popularly known as the White Bear; an improper appellation, as it confounds the Bear of the Arctic Seas with the Albino variety of the Common Bear. The former constitutes a perfectly distinct species, whose characteristics, apart from the yellowish-white colour of his rich soft fur, are a flattened and elongated head, a long neck, high legs, and feet whose conformation is admirably adapted to the habitat and amphibious existence of the animal. In fact, the sole of each foot is garnished with a thick fleece, which permits the Arctic bear to walk on the ice as on a carpet, and the toes are connected by a membrane which renders them eminently fit for natatory purposes. The Arctic bear seldom visits the land; his favourite sojourn is the floating ice-field, and his diet the corpses of whales and seals, or even living _Phocæ_, which he fearlessly attacks at the impulse of hunger. "On seeing his intended prey," says Captain Lyon, "he gets quietly into the water, and swims until to leeward of him, from whence, by frequent short dives, he silently makes his approaches, and so arranges his distances that at the last dive he comes to the spot where the seal is lying. If the poor animal attempts to escape by rolling into the water, he falls into the bear's clutches; if, on the contrary, he lies still, his destroyer makes a powerful spring, kills him on the ice, and devours him at leisure."