Fox

a well known animal of the dog family. The fox is smaller than the wolf. It has a sharper muzzle. Its ears are more pointed. It is more agile and alert, and steps more lightly. It is also provided with a large, bushy tail which it takes great pains to keep dry and clean. When it lies down to sleep this tail is carefully disposed like a fur blanket over its feet and nose. There are several species. The small arctic fox is of a blue gray in summer and pure white in winter. The silver fox has a beautiful silver gray pelt, for which trappers expect $50. The yellowish gray kit or swift fox of North America is found from Iowa northwestward. The fox of fable and history, the one that did not want sour grapes, is the common red fox of Europe and North America, although there are many varieties. It is an animal of proverbial cunning and sagacity.

Foxhunting is a favorite sport in England. A "meet" is quite a social event. Ladies and gentlemen appear at the appointed place mounted on their best horses. The foxhounds are brought to the field in leashes and are loosed in some thicket where foxes are supposed to have concealed themselves. When a fox is started the hounds follow the scent at full cry; the members of the party ride after at full speed vying with each other in their ability to take hedges, fences, and ditches. A fox generally leads off across country, but after a long time is pretty sure to return to its place of starting. It resorts to a great many devices, such as doubling back on its former track, leaping great ditches, walking fences, climbing the top of a stump and from there to a tree; but the hounds are usually too much for any but an experienced old fox. Unless it takes to its den, which it seems to have a strong disinclination to do, they usually succeed in overtaking it. The sportsman who is first up claims the bushy tail or brush as a trophy. An account of a foxhunt is quite incomplete without a list of accidents, more or less serious, that occur in the wild chase across ditches and fields. Foxhunting was a favorite sport in colonial Virginia and in later years has been revived. In England foxes are protected for the hunt regardless of the havoc they play in poultry yards.

The female fox or vixen usually prepares a nest for her cubs in a den in an open field, where they can play about and yet take to their hole with least likelihood of surprise. It is said that while a fox springs upon rabbits, partridges, and quails anywhere that it can find them, it will travel far to rob a hen roost rather than make possible trouble for itself and family by thieving near at home.

See Dog