CUNNING. 43 



thigh bone, she made for a thick alder-carr near at hand, 

 where the dogs soon came up with her. The first one that 

 attacked her, she bit so severely, that he ran off yelping 

 without daring to go near her again. The other, however, 

 grappled with her in good earnest, and their jaws became 

 locked together in such a manner that they could not sepa- 

 rate. The plaintive cries of the dogs having informed me 

 where they were rolling over one another, I hastened to the 

 spot, and struck the fox several times over the head with 

 my gun-stock, to make her quit her hold, which had at 

 length the desired effect. In the hurry, I tripped against a 

 Tufva, or hillock, in the deep morass, and fell to the ground, 

 and at the same moment the beast attacked me; but as I 

 fortunately had the gun in my right hand, I immediately 

 drove the stock between her jaws, and thus kept her so far 

 away from my body, that I was enabled to seize her by the 

 throat with my left hand, and thus to suffocate her. This 

 shows of what daring a wounded fox is capable of carrying 

 it so far, indeed, as to venture to attack the sportsman 

 himself. Before I fired, the dogs had driven her for about 

 two hours in the morning, in which while she had several 

 times attempted to make resistance. She was the largest 

 fox I ever saw, measuring from the point of the nose to the 

 tip of the tail, three feet eleven inches, and weighing fully 

 seventeen pounds. 



The fox is cunning to a proverb ; but if we are to believe 

 a hundredth part of the stories told of him in Scandinavia, 

 not only by ancient, but modern authors, he must be possessed 

 of almost human intellect. 



Olaus Magnus tells us, for instance, that to obtain access 

 to the honey of the wild or the bumble-bee, as also to 



