Wolves and Icacs 
shooting the foxes which skulked about their clearings, and even 
now those found in wild, unsettled country are comparatively 
easy to outwit. But the red fox of cultivated districts has 
learned a great deal from watching the ways of men, and_ has 
already very nearly caught up with Reynard of the Old World 
in the matter of a highly developed intellect. 
He now holds his own against man, as much by _ boldness 
and audacity as by caution; few of our wild animals look on 
man with so little awe. 
Only last winter | saw two sturdy fox-hunters hurrying 
through the snow, eager to head off a fox, which, judging 
from their remarks which I overheard, they imagined would 
cross the stream at a point a mile ahead. 
And all the time there was the fox they were after coolly 
following in their footsteps at a safe distance, while the hounds, 
baffled and outwitted, bayed dolefully in the woods somewhere 
on the other side of the stream. 
This trick of following the hunter is not in the least un- 
common. I have frequently, when returning in my own _ tracks 
from a tramp on snow-shoes, found the fresh trail of a fox 
who had been following me. 
But you will seldom catch him at it; the instant you stop 
he slips behind a tree, and if you turn back, vanishes in the 
shadow of the forests. 
I once saw my father driving home the cows on a sum- 
mer evening with an old fox, of whose presence he was totally 
unaware, trotting along the sunlit sheep-path scarcely one hun- 
dred steps behind him. 
The fox’s boldness in robbing hen-roosts is well known; 
and as most foxes know too much to visit the same place 
twice, it is only rarely that they get caught at it. 
I know of one instance when an enthusiastic fox hunter, 
arriving at daybreak in order to have an early start with the 
hounds, heard a disturbance in his hen-pen, and looking in to 
see what was the trouble, met a fox just coming out. 
The fox slipped by him and dashed away for the woods; 
and the hunter, thinking that this certainly was a good begin- 
ning for a day’s sport, put his dogs on the trail, confident of 
getting at least one new pelt that day. But all day the fox 
eluded them, and when at nightfall they came home _ unsuc- 
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