166 THE FOX 



when the devils hunt them the tricksters are seized 

 by the demons, while the just escape to heaven 

 exclaiming, ' All your cleverness could not save 

 you.' 



This fable is interesting as showing the antiquity 

 of foxhunting, and an illustration of it occurs to 

 everyone who has drawn a covert for jackal in India. 

 The hounds touch on a wild cat and there is a furious 

 chorus, which ceases as the cat takes refuge in a tree 

 and allows the pack to settle on the line of their 

 jackal. Every Indian M.F.H. knows what a trial 

 of patience the cat's one wile is to him. 



But it would take us too far to follow the fox 

 fables into the various lines they offer. We must 

 turn away from the satire of knights, 'priests and 

 kings, which varies from gentle raillery to fierce 

 diatribe, and confine ourselves to one line of thought, 

 the extent to which these fables of the fox are based 

 on fact. And very real observation of the lives and 

 habits of animals underlies these stories. In the 

 present day we have returned to the simpler methods 

 of the original fabulists and care more to tell of what 

 the animal is and does, than to confirm a philosophy 

 like the Hindoo, teach common sense by its example 

 like the Greeks, or point a moral or edge a satire like 

 the Roman or mediaeval writers. 



