354 Practical Game Preserving. 



Curiously enough, the fox has a decided taste for rats 

 food of a rather unpalatable kind and will often visit the 

 farmyard, and search about the buildings for these delicacies, 

 which, if easily obtained, will keep its unwelcome attention 

 away from the poultry. It will also watch about the edges 

 of streams where a colony of the common brown rat has 

 taken up its abode. It will not, however, trouble itself 

 much about the real water rat, probably because this animal, 

 being considerably different in its habits from its more 

 destructive relative, feeds chiefly on roots and aquatic 

 plants, and, consequently, has not the same nice flavour 

 which the brown rat has. 



The question of how foxes hunt, whether by sight or 

 by smell, has been a subject of some argument, without 

 much reasoning, and while some have declared for the 

 former as the one and only means, others have equally 

 strongly testified to its hunting only by the nose. In this 

 argument both are neither quite right nor wholly wrong, 

 for Reynard chooses the means most applicable to the 

 occasion, and employs both powers of sight and smell to 

 aid him in obtaining his prey. When the fox has any 

 means of seeing its quarry, it hunts it most certainly by 

 sight, and this is the case for the most part with rabbits. 

 In coverts where the undergrowth close to the ground is 

 thickly set, but comparatively open to the sight, such as 

 gorse and long heather, the rabbit follows its run by sights, 

 and when a fox pursues Bunny through cover of this nature 

 we have observed one so guided on more than one occasion 

 were it to follow the rabbit by scent alone, it would not 

 once out of fifty times come within several yards of its object. 



