PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



when, to my surprise, I jumped up a noble specimen 

 of the red, while deer shooting. From that date the 

 grey commenced to diminish, and I am informed by 

 reliable authority that at the present time not a single 

 representative of the smaller breed is to be found 

 in that district. Audubon, an authority on whom 

 generally the greatest reliance can be placed, regards 

 the black and red fox as simple varieties of the same 

 species. Doubtless he never heard of the red fox 

 being a foreigner, or he would probably have agreed in 

 the decision I have come to knowing the truth of the 

 red fox's introduction that the black and red fox are 

 entitled to be regarded as representatives of different 

 species. Nor has the red fox belied his ancestry or 

 deteriorated by his emigration. The keen and per- 

 severing foxhunters of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, 

 Carolina, and Georgia, give him the credit of being 

 the most lasting and difficult animal to run down that 

 the forests produce. From the natural differences 

 between England and America, fox-hunting is not only 

 a very dissimilarly-conducted sport, but in the latter 

 associated with more labour and hardship. The 

 woods are so immense that it generally results in 

 cover-hunting from start to finish; consequently 

 slower hounds require to be used, and every advantage 

 of pug taken. At dawn the Field assemble, so as to 

 catch their quarry with a full stomach, and it is no 

 uncommon thing for the sun to have reached the 

 western horizon and the hunters to be thirty miles 

 from home ere the death wo whoop be sounded. 



But to the black fox. I had often longed to cap- 

 ture one of these beauties during my boyish residence 

 on the American continent. The price that the pelt 



