396 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



considerably fewer victims. Here, it was considered, 

 he could be found during the day more often than 

 not within two hundred yards of the holding. Some- 

 times, he would even make a dash on the hens as 

 they crowded round the grain that the poultry- 

 master had just thrown down. Once, this when 

 the cubs were growing fast, the hens had no sooner 

 been let out in the morning than one vanished 

 "squawking" in the jaws of the brigand. In half 

 an hour the fox returned, and went away with some 

 reluctance when he found the irate farmer ready to 

 receive him with a warmth I dare no more than hint 

 at. Some of these exploits are more like the ignorant 

 boldness of a young fox, but nothing is set down here 

 that does not rightly belong to this particular four- 

 year-old villain. 



All the fowls that Vulpes took from our valley in 

 the course of a year would scarcely keep one healthy 

 fox in food for a month. Of rabbits, to which he is 

 in the main quite welcome, he must have caught ten 

 times as many. They seemed to know his rabbit 

 seasons and his fowl seasons. When he was not 

 out after rabbit, at any rate, they took little notice 

 of him. Possibly they were as confident at other 

 times. Certainly he seemed able to get rabbit when- 

 ever he fancied the diet. Best of all, he liked the 

 young things not yet out from the " stop," but it 

 seemed to be rather more the vixen's work than his 

 to scratch out these tender tit-bits. 



We were always astonished at the number of voles, 

 short-tailed field-mice, as we call them, that Vulpes 

 managed to catch and eat. We are not cursed with 

 many of these unwelcome rascals, a fact for which 



