LITTLE FOXES 



WHEN we heard in January the thrice-repeated bark 

 of the dog-fox and the melancholy answering scream 

 of the vixen, we knew that the farm would probably 

 have to support little foxes again. The vixen did 

 not, however, return to her old earth under the beech 

 between two hill-fields, with its convenient exits on 

 each side of a stout hedge. It is probable that her 

 careless housekeeping of last summer had made it 

 insanitary. Later the badgers took this earth, nobly 

 undertaking the labour necessary to make it clean 

 and sweet according to their more fastidious taste. 

 Our vixen or another moved farther up-hill, and drew 

 out a romantic and convenient den where its rocky 

 skeleton begins to outcrop with a new steepness. One 

 entrance is high and narrow, because the approach of 

 two limestone blocks makes it so ; the other is shrouded 

 by thin bushes, and gives on an overgrown mound 

 whose bulk testifies to the cavity within that rabbits 

 or foxes of many generations have made. 



We did not discover these new quarters (they had 

 not known foxes for many years) till early primroses 

 were beginning to understar the brambles and the 

 yellowing furze. In this little dell beneath the hill 

 an unusual wealth of violets, sweet and purple, had 

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