He is never to be fully tamed; he languishes when deprived of liberty, and if kept too long in a domestic state he dies of chagrin. When abroad, he is often seen to amuse himself with his fine bushy tail, running sometimes for a considerable while in circles to catch it. In cold weather he wraps it about his nose.
In the northern countries there is a black fox, a variety of the common fox. The Kamschatdales informed Dr. Grieve that these were once so numerous with them that whenever they fed their dogs, it was a difficult piece of labour to prevent them from partaking. The doctor says, that when he was in Kamschatka, they were in such plenty near the forts, that in the night they entered them without any apparent apprehension of danger from the dogs of the country.
One of the inhabitants, he informs us, caught several of them in the pit where he kept his fish.
The mode usually adopted by the inhabitants for taking them is by traps baited with live animals; and, for the greater security, two or three of these traps are placed upon one hillock, that, whatever way the foxes approach, they may fall into one of them. This is found necessary, since those which have been once in danger, ever afterwards go so cautiously to work, as frequently to eat the bait without being seized. But, with all their cunning, when several traps are employed, it is difficult for them to escape. Their skins are very valuable.
Foxes, Anecdotes of.—Near the Falls of Clyde, on the summit of an awful precipice, a spot is shown where a fox once exhibited extraordinary cunning. Being hard pressed by the dogs, he seized in his teeth a fast hold of some pendulous shrub growing on the verge, threw himself across the brow of the precipice, and after remaining there until the scent was strong, he recovered the ground, and jumped into an adjoining thicket. Three couple of the leading hounds, in the eagerness of pursuit, actually rushed over the bank, and were dashed to atoms. It is said that the fox escaped. The anecdote is told and credited in the neighbourhood.
The old Duke of Grafton had his hounds at Croydon, and occasionally had foxes taken in Whittlebury forest, and sent up in the venison-cart to London; the foxes thus brought, were carried the next hunting morning in a hamper behind the duke’s carriage, and turned down before the hounds. In the course of this plan, a fox was taken from a coppice in the forest, and forwarded as usual. Some time after a fox was caught in the same coppice, whose size and appearance was so strikingly like that got at the same spot, that the keepers suspected it was the fox they had been in possession of before, and directed the man who took him to London, to inquire whether the fox hunted on such a day was killed, or escaped; the latter having been the case, the suspicion of the keepers was strengthened. Some short time after, a fox was again caught in the same coppice, which those concerned in the taking were assured was the fox they had bagged twice before; to be, however, perfectly able to identify their old acquaintance, should another opportunity offer, previous to his third journey to town, he had one ear slit, and some holes punched through the other. With these marks he was despatched to London, was again hunted, and escaped, and within a very few weeks was retaken in the same coppice; when his marks justified the keeper’s conjectures, in spite of the seeming improbability of the fact. It is with some concern, that the conclusion of this singular account is added, which terminates in the death of poor reynard, who was killed after a very severe chase, bearing upon him the signals of his former escapes, and which ought to have entitled him to that lenity and privilege which was formerly granted to a stag who had beat his royal pursuers.
Some curious instances have been related to me of the cunning evinced by foxes, not only in the preservation of their lives, but in procuring themselves food. A fox, which had been frequently hunted in Leicestershire, was always lost at a particular place, where the hounds could never recover the scent. This circumstance having excited some curiosity, it was discovered that he jumped upon, and ran along a clipped hedge, at the end of which was an old pollard oak tree, hollow in the middle. He crept into this hollow, and lay concealed till the alarm was over. His retreat, however, being discovered, he was driven from it and killed. Another fox selected a magpie’s nest as a place of retreat, and was discovered in consequence of a labouring man having observed a quantity of bones, feathers of birds, &c., on the ground under the nest. The following fact may be relied upon, extraordinary as it may appear. I received it from a gentleman of the strictest veracity, who communicated it to me very recently, on his return from the south of France, where he had been residing for some months. A friend of his, with whom he passed much of his time there, was in the habit of shooting in a part of the country where there was much wild and rocky ground. Part of this rocky ground was on the side of a very high hill, which was not accessible for a sportsman, and from which both hares and foxes took their way in the evening to the plain below. There were two channels or gullies made by the rains, leading from these rocks to the lower ground. Near one of these channels, the sportsman in question, and his attendant, stationed themselves one evening, in hopes of being able to shoot some hares. They had not been there long, when they observed a fox coming down the gully, and followed by another. After playing together for a little time, one of the foxes concealed himself under a large stone or rock, which was at the bottom of the channel, and the other returned to the rocks. He soon, however, came back, chasing a hare before him. As the hare was passing the stone where the first fox had concealed himself, he tried to seize her by a sudden spring, but missed his aim. The chasing fox then came up, and finding that his expected prey had escaped, through the want of skill in his associate, he fell upon him, and they both fought with so much animosity, that the parties who had been watching their proceedings came up and destroyed them both.