THE FOX SEES THE EAR, THE RABBIT SEES THE TAIL.
Now, foxes often run along a fence, or the top of a wall, as far as the end. Then they go back for some distance on their own track, and leap off the wall as far as they can, so as to mislead the hounds. Knowing this trick, Mr. Webber took the hounds all round the fence and the plantation, but could find no signs of the fox. At last he determined to hide himself near the place, when the hounds were again set on the fox, and try to discover the trick. After a while the fox came quite slowly until he reached the fence. Then he jumped on the top rail, and ran along it for about two hundred yards, until he came opposite a dead tree, nearly sixteen feet from the fence. He paused for a moment, and, with a tremendous jump, leaped upon a tree, alighting on a large knot on the side of the trunk. Then he ran up the trunk, which was slightly sloping, and entered a hollow at the top, he lay hid, no one even suspecting that he could leap from a fence to the tree, much less run up it. This feat was the more wonderful, because ivy does not grow out of doors in America, so that there seemed to be no foot-hold. Indeed, had it not been for the knot, the fox could not have climbed the tree.
Mr. Webber was so pleased with the cleverness of the fox that he would not betray the trick, but amused himself on many occasions by watching the fox baffle the hounds.
Sometimes the mother fox chooses a hollow tree, instead of a burrow, for her nursery.
In April, 1868, a strange discovery was made in Warwickshire, seven dead cubs having been found in the top of a pollard oak. It was clear that the mother had been killed, and that the poor little cubs had died of hunger.
The cubs, when very young, are odd-looking little creatures—not in the least like their parents. They are pale brown in colour, have short, snub noses, like those of pug dogs, and little, short, pointed tails, not at all like the beautiful "brushes" into which they will grow in course of time.
The courage of the fox is wonderful. A fox was on one occasion sent to Mr. Bartlett for the purpose of being stuffed. It had only three feet, and, on opening it, Mr. Bartlett found the missing foot in its stomach! The animal had clearly been taken in a trap, and had freed itself by biting off the foot by which it was caught. We can understand why it should bite off the foot by which it was detained, but why it should eat its own foot seems rather puzzling. I am inclined to think that it did so by mere instinct, which made it eat any morsel of bleeding flesh that came between its jaws.
[If foxes are only fit to be hunted down, why are they preserved for that cruelty?—Ed.]