The insects on which they feed are mostly of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly.

"This last is the most numerous.

In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead multitudes and remain a great nuisance.

I have several times, in my inland voyages from York Fort (Hudson's Bay), found it scarcely possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the depth of two or three feet." It is more than probable that the bears occasionally feed on these dead insects.

After the middle of July, when they take to a diet of berries, they are excellent eating, and continue to be so to the end of the winter.
The Arctic foxes of this region when young are sooty black all over, and gradually change to a light ash-grey in colour, with a dark, almost blue, tint on the head, legs, and back.