in the Fox and other Animals. 569 



fox had, by some means or other, shown that the place was 

 not impregnable ; there had been terrible havoc among the 

 hens ; and the fox had been gluttonous even to the death. She 

 pronounced his funeral oration in certain most expressive 

 Gaelic phrases, which we shall not quote, and will not trans- 

 late ; and then, without farther ceremony, gave him a resting- 

 place, which, she said, was worse than a dog's burial. She 

 took him up by the tail, and swung him with all her might 

 into the receptacle in which were accumulated the requisites 

 for garden compost. The fox fell safely, and rose again 

 speedily, and, like Curl the bookseller, in the Dunciad, he 

 " scoured and stunk along," until he gained the cover of the 

 woods, leaving Christian in utter consternation, and the minis- 

 ter minus both his pullets and the glory of his impregnable 

 hen-house. 



" The entrance to this place was by a stone some feet from 

 the ground, with a little hole over it, and by this the fox must 

 have gained admission; and so, gaining admission, he had 

 killed every fowl that he could reach; and he must have 

 killed them so silently and so suddenly, as that no noise or 

 complaint on the part of any one had in the least alarmed the 

 others. This is, we believe, the most striking peculiarity of 

 the fox on his predatory excursions ; and the above anecdote 

 shows it in a very striking light : for there were perches so 

 elevated, that no fox could reach them ; and as the pullets 

 were in the habit of taking to them in other cases of alarm, of 

 course they would have done so on the invasion of the fox, if 

 his deeds of slaughter had been attended with any noise. We 

 have mentioned these anecdotes, because they are characteris- 

 tic, and we know them to be true." 



The above are the instances to which I before alluded in the 

 essay which I am pleased to observe has elicited Dr. Weissen- 

 born's interesting communication ; only, as they were orally 

 more briefly related to me by Mr. Mudie, a trivial discord- 

 ancy occurs in the narration of one of them, the circumstance 

 of the mattock having being omitted, which negatives a conse- 

 quent remark that I was led to append. A species more cele- 

 brated for feigning death on similar occasions is the common 

 opossum (Didelphis virginiana) of North America; insomuch 

 that to " 'possum" has become a current word with our trans- 

 Atlantic brethren to express the deceit. " Suppose the farmer," 

 remarks Audubon, " has surprised an opossum in the act of 

 killing one of his best fowls. His angry feelings urge him to 

 kick the poor beast, which, conscious of its inability to resist, 

 rolls off like a ball. The more the farmer rages, the more 

 reluctant is the animal to manifest resentment; at last, there 



