Lenz had a tame female fox which he received just as she was beginning to eat solid food, but had already become so vicious and so much addicted to biting that she always growled when eating her favorite food and bit right and left into straw and wood, even when nobody was disturbing her. Kind treatment soon made her so tame that she would allow him to take a freshly-killed rabbit out of her bloody mouth and insert his fingers instead. Even when grown up she liked to play with him, was demonstrative in her joy when he visited her, wagged her tail, whined, and jumped around. She was just as much pleased to see a stranger, and she distinguished strangers at a distance of fifty paces, when they were turning the corner of the house, and with loud cries would invite them to come up to her, an honor which she never accorded either to him or his brother, who usually fed her, probably because she knew they would do so anyway.
Reynard has been known to attack and kill young calves and lambs, and if the seashore is near will revel in oysters and shellfish. A group of rabbits are feeding in a clover-patch. He'll crawl along, nibbling the juicy flowers until near enough to make a grab. He'll stalk a bird, with his hind legs dragging behind him, until near enough to spring. How farmers dread his inroads in the poultry yard! Fasten the yard up tight and he will burrow a winding passage into the ground beneath and suddenly appear among the drowsy chickens and stupid geese, whose shrill and alarmed cries arouse the farmer from his bed to sally forth, finding all safe. Then the fox will sneak back and pack away with the plumpest pullet or the fattest goose.
AMONG ANIMALS.
The deer really weeps, its eyes being provided with lachrymal glands.
Ants have brains larger in proportion to the size of their bodies than any other living creature.
There are three varieties of the dog that never bark—the Australian dog, the Egyptian shepherd dog and the "lion-headed" dog of Tibet.
The insect known as the water boatman has a regular pair of oars, his legs being used as such. He swims on his back, as in this position there is less resistance to his progress.
Seventeen parcels of ants' eggs from Russia, weighing 550 pounds, were sold in Berlin recently for 20 cents a pound.
The peacock is now kept entirely, it would seem, for ornament—for the ornament of garden terraces (among old-fashioned and trim-kept yew hedges he is specially in place)—in his living state, and for various æsthetic uses to which his brilliant plumage and hundred-eyed tailfeathers are put when he is dead or moulting. But we seldom eat him now, though he used to figure with the boar's head, the swan and the baron of beef on those boards which were beloved by our forefathers, more valiant trenchermen than ourselves. Yet young peahen is uncommonly good eating, even now, at the end of the nineteenth century, and in the craze that some people have for new birds—Argus pheasants, Reeve's pheasants, golden pheasants and what not—to stock their coverts, it is a wonder that some one has not tried a sprinkling of peacocks.