FOX.] NATURAL HISTORY. 121 



THE Fox takes, the juice which flows from the pine-tree 

 into his food, and so recovers his health and prolongs his 

 life. When hungry, he imitates the barking of a dog. 



Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. ch. clix. 



SERPENTS, apes and Foxes, and all other dangerous, 

 harmful beasts have small eyes, but sheep and oxen, which 

 are simple, very great eyes. The Fox with his breath 

 draweth field-mice out of their holes, like as a hart draweth 

 out serpents with his breath, and devoureth them. In 

 Arabia and Palestine they are so ravenous that in the night 

 they fear not to carry into their dens old shoes and vessels, 

 or instruments of husbandry. But if a Fox eat any meat 

 wherein are bitter almonds [or aloes] they die thereof if 

 they drink not presently. If wild rue be secretly hung 

 under a hen's wing, no Fox will meddle with her. In some 

 places they take upon them to take him [the Fox] with 

 nets, which seldom proveth, because with his teeth he 

 teareth them in pieces. The French have a kind of gin to 

 take by the legs, and I have heard of some which have 

 found the Fox's leg in the same gin, bitten off with his 

 own teeth from his body ; other have counterfeited them- 

 selves dead, restraining their breath and winking, not 

 stirring any member when they saw the hunter come to 

 take them out of the gin [and] so soon as the Fox per- 

 ceiveth himself free, away he went, and never gave thanks 

 for his deliverance. With his tail he draweth fishes to the 

 brim of the river, and when that he observeth a good 

 booty, he casteth the fishes clean out of the water upon 

 the dry land, and then devoureth them. The tongue [of 

 a Fox] either dried or green, laid to the flesh wherein is 

 any dart or other sharp head, it draweth them forth 

 violently. The liver dried and drunk cureth often-sighing. 



Topsell, "Four-footed Beasts," pp. 174-9. 



A Fox will not touch any cocks, hens, or such like 

 pullen, that have eaten (before) the dried liver of a Rey- 

 nard, nor those hens which a cock, having a collar about 

 I is neck of a Fox- skin, hath trodden. 

 Holland's Pliny, bk. xxviii. ch. xx. 

 V. also Brock. 



