I 4 6 THE FOX 



favourite smeuse in the hedgerow. He takes covert 

 near one of these, or even scratches out a sort of rough 

 trench so as to conceal himself more effectually, and 

 waits till a hare comes through the hedge, when he 

 springs upon her and carries her off. Occasionally 

 two foxes will hunt together for though the fox is 

 generally speaking a solitary, there is no fixity about 

 his habits any more than there is in his size, weight, 

 or the colour of his coat. He adapts himself in all 

 respects to his surroundings. At the same time I 

 think when two or more foxes are seen working 

 together, they are usually a dog and a vixen that have 

 paired, or it may be a vixen with one or more of her 

 cubs. It has been said that foxes in the highlands 

 combine to kill lambs and even full-grown sheep. I 

 have failed to find any sufficient confirmation of this. 

 But I should not like to say that it never happened, 

 for the study of such an animal as the fox is a whole- 

 some corrective to dogmatism. 



But to return to the case of two foxes hunting 

 together. I have been told by a man who was a 

 gardener by day and a poacher by night, that he used 

 to take advantage of this habit of the fox. There was 

 a favourite feeding-ground of the hares (which were 

 carefully preserved) that was regularly worked by two 

 foxes from a neighbouring wood. One would take 



