The Hills of Hingham

by Dallas Lore Sharp

That the hound was tired I felt sure; but that he was on the trail of a fox I could not believe; and I was watching him curiously when something stirred on the top of the ridge almost beside me.

Without turning so much as my head, I saw the fox, a beautiful creature, going slowly round and round in a circle—in a figure eight, rather—among the bushes; then straight off it went and back; off again in another direction and back; then in and out, round and round, utterly without hurry, until, taking a long leap down the steep hillside, the wily creature was off at an easy trot.

The hound did know what he was about. Across the valley, up the ridge, he worked his sure way, while I held my breath at his accuracy. Striking the woven circle at the top of the ridge, he began to weave in and out, back and forth, sniffling and whimpering like a tired child, beating gradually out into a wider and wider circle, and giving the fox all the rest it could want, before taking up the lead again and following on down the trail.

The hound knew what he was about; but so did the fox: the latter, moreover, taking the initiative, inventing the trick, leading the run, and so in the end not only escaping the hound, but also vastly widening the distance between their respective wits and abilities.

I recently witnessed a very interesting instance of this superiority of the fox. One of the best hunters in my neighborhood, a man widely known for the quality of his hounds, sold a dog, Gingles, an extraordinarily fine animal, to a hunter in a near-by town. The new owner brought his dog down here to try him out.

The hound was sent into the woods and was off in a moment on a warm trail. But it was not long before the baying ceased, and shortly after, back came the dog. The new owner was disappointed; but the next day he returned and started the dog again, only to have the same thing happen, the dog returning in a little while with a sheepish air of having been fooled. Over and over the trial was made, when, finally, the dog was taken back to its trainer as worthless.

Then both men came out with the dog, the trainer starting him on the trail and following on after him as fast as he could break his way through the woods. Suddenly, as in the trials before, the baying ceased, but before the baffled dog had had time to grow discouraged, the men came up to find him beating distractedly about in a small, freshly burned area among the bushes, his nose full of strong ashes, the trail hopelessly lost. With the help of the men the fox was dislodged, and the dog carried him on in a course that was to his new owner's entire satisfaction.

The fox jumped into the ashes to save himself. Just so have the swifts left the hollow trees and taken to my chimney, the phoebe to my pigpen, the swallow to my barn loft, the vireo to my lilac bush, the screech owls to my apple trees, the red squirrel for its nest to my ice-house, and the flat-nosed adder to the sandy knoll by my beehives. I have taken over from its wild inhabitants fourteen acres in Hingham; but, beginning with the fox, the largest of my wild creatures, and counting only what we commonly call "animals" (beasts, birds, and reptiles), there are dwelling with me, being fruitful and multiplying, here on this small plot of cultivated earth this June day, some seventy species of wild things—thirty-six in feathers, fourteen in furs (not reckoning in the muskrat on the other side of the road), twelve in scales, four in shells, nine in skins (frogs, newts, salamanders)—seventy-five in all.

Here is a multiple life going serenely and abundantly on in an environment whose utter change from the primeval is hardly exaggerated by phoebe's shift for a nest from a mossy ledge in the heart of the ancient woods to a joist close up against the hot roof of my pigpen behind the barn. From this very joist, however, she has already brought off two broods since March, one of four and one of five.

As long as pigpens endure, and that shall be as long as the human race endures, why should not the line of phoebes also endure? The case of the fox is not quite the same, for he needs more room than a pigpen; but as long as the domestic hen endures, if we will but give the fox half the chance we give to phoebe, he too shall endure.