40 MATERNAL TENDERNESS. 



tenderness, the old attachment between her and the fox her 

 nursling, had been renewed." 



Many interesting stories are told in Sweden of the love 

 the fox bears to her offspring, of which the following are 

 perhaps not the least curious : 



" On the estate of Gunnerstorp in Scania," writes the 

 Count Corfitz Beckfriis, "a bitch-fox was discovered with 

 her cubs. The mother gallantly defended them ; and 

 although the cubs were lying almost at the feet of the 

 by-standers, they had a great difficulty in preventing her 

 from carrying them away. In the meanwhile a servant ran 

 home for a gun ; and after his return, several blows of a stick, 

 and finally a shot, which took effect in her hind-quarters, did 

 not deter her from bearing one of the cubs several fathoms 

 from the spot." 



Again : " Several years ago," says M. Skoldberg, " the 

 late Lansman,* M. Drougge, who resided in the parish of 

 Knista, province of Nerike, set off one spring morning to a 

 Ting, or court of assize. He had proceeded but a little 

 distance from home, when he discovered a bitch-fox in the 

 dike by the road-side, with a whole flock of goslings the 

 Lansman's own property, which she had just slaughtered. 

 Our traveller, who had nearly passed the fox unobserved, no 

 sooner caught sight of her, than armed with his whip, he 

 jumped out of the vehicle and sprang to the spot. But 

 Michel waited not his arrival ; for seizing one of the goslings 

 in her mouth, she ran at speed across the fields towards her 

 home. The Lansman, who would gladly have been both 



* A subordinate official ; his duties embracing those of constable, sheriff's 

 officer, and tax-collector in rural districts, where he is, in short, the acting 

 authority. 



