IV 

 BEAUTY OF THE FOX 



IT is only by a fortunate chance, a rare conjunction 

 of circumstances, that we are able to see any wild 

 animal at its best. And by animal it must be 

 explained is here meant a hair-clothed vertebrate 

 that suckles its young and goes on four feet. 



Chiefly on this account it would be hard in any 

 company of men well acquainted with our fauna 

 to find two persons to agree as to which is the 

 handsomest or prettiest of our indigenous mammals. 



Undoubtedly the stag, one would exclaim: 

 another would perhaps venture to name the field- 

 mouse, or the dormouse, or the water-vole, that 

 quaint miniature beaver in his sealskin-coloured 

 coat, sitting erect on the streamlet's margin 

 busily nibbling at the pale end of a polished rush 

 stalk which he has cut off at the root and is now 

 holding clasped to his breast with his little hands. 

 Any one who had thus seen him, the brown sunlit 

 bank, with its hanging drapery of foliage and 

 flowers for background, reflected in the clear water 

 below, could well be pardoned for praising his 

 beauty and giving him the palm. Another would 

 so 



