SAGACITY IN A BITCH-FOX 263 



Your country requires a good terrier. I should 

 prefer the black or white terrier : some there are so 

 like a fox, that awkward feople frequently mistake 

 one for the other. If you like terriers to run with 

 your pack, large ones, at times, are useful ; but in an 

 earth they do little good, as they cannot always get up 

 to a fox. You had better not enter a young terrier at 

 a badger. Youn^ terriers have not the art of shifting 

 like old ones ; and, should they be good for any thing, 

 most probably will go up boldly to him at once, and 

 get themselves most terribly bitten : for this reason, 

 you should enter them at young foxes when you can. 

 Before I quit this subject I must mention an extra- 

 ordinary instance of sagacity in a bitch-fox that was 

 digged out of an earth, with four young ones, and 

 brought in a sack upwards of twenty miles to a gentle- 

 man in my neighbourhood, to be turned out the next 

 day before his hounds. This fox, weak as she must 

 have been, ran in a straight line back again to her own 

 country, crossed two rivers, and was at last killed near 

 to the earth out of which she had been digged the day 

 before. Foxes that are bred in cliffs near the sea, 

 seldom are known to ramble any great distance from 

 them : and sportsmen, who know the country where 

 this fox was turned out, will tell you, that there is not 

 the least reason to think that she could have had any 

 knowledge of it. 



Besides the digging of foxes (by which method 

 many young ones are taken, and old ones destroyed), 

 traps, &c, too often are fatal to them : — farmers for 

 their lambs (which, by the bye, few foxes ever kill) ; 



