FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 23 



their wont when a fox is killed before them; but 

 my friend, the hunter, told me they were as sick 

 and distressed as ever dogs were after an encoun- 

 ter with a skunk. About the last of May, 1873, 

 I witnessed a like incident. A stanch old hound 

 of my own having accompanied me on a fish- 

 ing excursion, started a fox in a piece of woods 

 where a litter of young were known to be. Anx- 

 ious to preserve the litter for sport in the fall, I 

 hastened to call in the dog. I found him trotting 

 along with lowered tail, the vixen leisurely trot- 

 ting not more than five rods in advance, stopping 

 every half-minute to bark at him, when he would 

 stop till she again went on. I called him in as 

 easily as if he had been nosing for a mouse, though 

 under ordinary circumstances it would have re- 

 quired a vigorous assertion of authority to have 

 taken him off so hot a scent. 



If the life of the vixen is spared and she is not 

 continually harassed by men or dogs during the 

 breeding season, she will remain in the same lo- 

 cality for years, and rear litter after litter there; 

 perhaps not always inhabiting the same burrow, 

 but one somewhere within the same piece of woods 

 or on the same hill. If she is much disturbed, or 

 if she perceives that her burrow is discovered, she 

 speedily removes her young to another retreat. 

 The young foxes continue to haunt the woods 

 where they were reared for some months after 



