HUNTING 109 



" Ireland was ould Ireland, when England was a pu[), 

 And Ireland will be Ireland yet, when England's beggared u[)." 



In the British Natural History Museum, London, 

 there is to be seen a fox's skeleton reputed to be 

 a million years old. This can be compared with 

 one of the present day, and the strange fact is 

 that they are identical. When we take into 

 consideration the evolutionary process, not diffi- 

 cult to observe in domestic and semi-domestic 

 animals and birds, as regards structural changes 

 that take place even in the few years that the 

 longest lived of human beings have the oppor- 

 tunity of observation, it appears strange that 

 the fox should be one of the few species of the 

 wild fauna of the world in which the process is 

 apparently retarded. 



It points to the suggestion that throughout 

 this long period the fox has never been forced 

 by circumstances to change his habits, and 

 being of a solitary nature has never become 

 sufficiently numerous (although his habitat is 

 almost universal) to cause him to be hunted by 

 other and stronger animals in quest of food, or 

 by man, anxious to punish him for depredations 



