Photo by C. Reid] [Wishaw, N.B.
LEICESTERSHIRE FOX.
Leicestershire is the best fox-hunting county in England. The foxes are famous for their speed and endurance.
The Common Fox, the foundation or type of all the above, is the best-known carnivorous animal in this country. Abroad its habits do not greatly differ, except that, not being hunted much with hounds, it is less completely nocturnal. It drops its young in an earth early in April. Thither the vixen carries food till late in June, when the cubs come out, and often move to a wood or a corn-field. There they are still fed, but learn to do a little on their own account by catching mice and moles. By late September the hounds come cub-hunting, partly to kill off superfluous foxes, partly to educate the young hounds, and to teach the foxes to fear them and to make them leave cover easily. Four or five cubs in a litter are commonly seen. The distance which a fox will run is extraordinary. The following is a true account of one of the most remarkable runs ever known. The hounds were those of Mr. Tom Smith, master of the Hambledon Hunt. He was the man of whom another famous sportsman said that if he were a fox he should prefer to be hunted by a pack of hounds rather than by Tom Smith with a stick in his hand. The fox was found in a cover called Markwells, at one o'clock in the afternoon in December, near Petersfield. It crossed into Sussex, and ran into an earth in Grafham Hill a little before dark. The fox had gone twenty-seven miles. The hounds had forty miles to go back to kennel that night, and three only found their way home four days afterwards. Dog-foxes assemble in considerable numbers when a vixen is about in spring, and at all times common foxes are sociable creatures, though not actually living in societies. Sometimes as many as five or six are found in a single earth. Two years ago five foxes and a badger were found in one near Romford. They eat mice, beetles, rats, birds, game, poultry, and frogs. Their favourite food is rabbits. If there are plenty of these, they will not touch other game. They hunt along the railway-lines for dead birds killed by the telegraph-wires. In the New Forest they also go down to the shore and pick up dead fish. One in the writer's possession was shot when carrying away a lamb from a sheepfold near the cliffs of Sidmouth, in Devon. The shepherd thought it was a marauding dog, and lay in wait with a gun.
Photo by Ottomar Anschütz] [Berlin.
TOO DIFFICULT!
Foxes can easily climb trees with small projecting branches. One was found 87 feet up a tree in Savernake Forest; but a branchless stump such as that here shown no fox could climb.
The Arctic Fox.
