Prairie Red-fox 727 



As already noted, this useful member serves further as a 

 fender in fighting, but it has also its disadvantage. Dunham 

 Wheeler, of New York, tells me that once while hunting a Fox 

 in the Adirondacks, during early spring, when the snow was 

 deepest and wet, he saw the creature coming toward him; it 

 stopped and seemed to worry its tail; again it did this when 

 nearer. He shot the Fox and found that its tail was heavy 

 with water, and, when the crafty one stopped, it had been to 

 wring or stamp out the water with its front paws and so reduce 

 the heavy burden of the water-logged brush. 



In the early part of the winter the Fox hunts chiefly at dusk, hunt- 

 but the growing scarcity of food increases the need for diligence, 

 and in February and March it may be seen abroad at all hours. 



I have often followed a fox-track for miles to learn this 

 hunter's methods. He goes on a general up-wind course, but 

 turns aside to examine every promising thicket and sedgy 

 hollow. He goes to all the places where he remembers having 

 good luck on previous hunts; he calls and sniffs at all the signal 

 posts as described in the Wolf account, though to a less 

 degree. He adds his own record to those already inscribed. 

 He trots along ridge after ridge, he seeks out a bare knoll on 

 which he has voided dung before now, and, finding the spot, 

 endeavours to repeat the act. He stops at the slightest click of 

 leaf or twig, freezes to a statue in an instant, holding one foot 

 up in a pose of wonderful grace. Sometimes he stands on 

 hind-legs to overlook the grass or bounds aloft for an observa- 

 tion hop, after the manner of a Jack-rabbit. He searches the 

 wind with his nose, he trots on by the hour, missing nothing, 

 and passing from cover to cover, in a somewhat zigzag line, but 

 with a general up-wind course. He sneaks by settlers' homes, 

 looking for luck, and is not above feasting on offal. He looks 

 out sharply for the dog, and, if pursued, easily leaves his foe 

 behind in a few hundred yards, then will sometimes turn and 

 bark in defiance, tempting the dog to further pursuit. He runs 

 across the fresh track of a Rabbit, follows this for a time, and 

 may even succeed in springing on the crouching Bunny; but the 



