SLYER THAN A FOX. 63 



of ways miles away, and at last probably would have suc- 

 ceeded in getting away. I tried this lame hound another 

 day. He started a fox which, as soon as he saw the dog 

 was lame, adopted the same tactics as the other one had. 



5. " That settled in my mind that if a fox only felt cer- 

 tain of eventually getting a safe hiding-place, being chased 

 by a hound was just as much fun for him as it was for the 

 hunter, and he would enjoy it just so long as he felt in- 

 clined to. I have hunted foxes with a hound disabled in 

 one leg ever since, and never found one fox yet that 

 wouldn't take things most tantalizingly easy with the dog, 

 and never failed to get every fox I started, unless my gun 

 went back on me. 



6. " I found also that foxes were inordinately fond 

 of field-mice. There were some places where field-mice 

 were quite plenty, but as a general thing they were scarce. 

 So I trapped a number of them and went to breeding 

 them. They were very prolific, and I soon had a wide 

 extent of country stocked with mice. I selected old fields, 

 on the edge of woods or brush-lots. The foxes were not 

 long in finding out where the mice were thickest. They 

 generally came to feed on them just between sunset and 

 dark, when the mice were out in force, squeaking and 

 playing about. You could hear them squeak about the 

 fields plainly, and I noticed that a fox would enter a field 

 and listen for the noise. As soon as he heard a mouse 

 squeak, he would steal up as a fox only can, and that 

 mouse was his. 



7. " Hidden behind a convenient bush, it was no trou- 

 ble for me to gather in sometimes three or four foxes in 

 an evening. Watching the foxes in the fields answering 

 the squeal of a mouse, I concluded I could improve on my 

 plan of hunting. I made a whistle that I could blow on 

 and exactly imitate the noise made by a fiel 



UK ' 



UNIVERSITY 



