402 Origines Zoological, 



he was formerly supposed to sweep out the marks of his foot- 

 steps with his tail : and even to simulate death, to delude his 

 pursuers. 



" And as a fox, with hot pursuit 



Chased through the warren, cast about 



To save his credit, and among 



Dead vermin on a gallows hung ; 



And while the dogs ran underneath, 



Escaped by counterfeiting death." Hudibras. 



^sop has left us the fable of the fox and the grapes ; whence 

 of disappointed hopes we say that the grapes are sour : and 

 when some degree of art and management, as well as deci- 

 sion, is considered essential to the accomplishment of an 

 object, it is said, that we must eke out the lion's skin with the 

 fox's tail. 



With three hundred foxes, tied in pairs by the tail, and a 

 firebrand placed between each pair, Samson burnt the stand- 

 ing corn of the Philistines, who kept from him his wife 

 (Judges, XV.) : but it is probable that the hyaena, a very 

 common beast in the East, was the animal here meant. The 

 female of the fox is called foxen, or iixen, whence the 

 name vixen is applied in reproach to a woman of a wayward 

 or spiteful temper. 



THE HARE. 



Timid and solitary, the emblem of melancholy among the 

 Egyptians, and therefore considered as the forerunner of ill 

 luck, if she crossed our path. By the law of the Sabians, if 

 any one called another a hare, he was obliged to compound 

 for the injury, by the payment of a large fine, as the name 

 was considered to be synonymous with coward ; and he who 

 indulges in wild and improbable fancies is called hare- 

 brained. * 



to bruise and scatter about, mostly within reach : he then retired, in an op- 

 posite direction, to the full length of his chain. The object of this con- 

 trivance was to decoy a number of fowls that were accustomed to enter 

 the court, but which were usually so much attentive to their own safety as 

 to defeat the various stratagems of reynard. When, however, some had 

 become so much off their guard as to venture within the circle of danger, 

 the fox was seen to spring from his lurking-place across the diameter of 

 the circle, and seize his prey. 



The fox, when hunted, never runs through a gatej nor does it cross a 

 hedge, in a smooth and even part, but chooses the roughest spot, where 

 briars and thorns abound, and mounts the eminence, not straight forward 

 as a hare does, but obliquely, scrambling up, not springing over it. — 

 J. Couch. Polperro^ Cornwall. {Received June II. 1834.)] 



* [Burns has done much, in the following exquisite verse, to render the 

 faculty of being " harebrained" estimable. He, in sketching the character- 



