THE FOX 109 



light indicated a wood-clothed valley. The nearer 

 coverts loomed black and forbidding through the 

 twilight, and from their dim and mysterious recesses 

 came the hoot of first one owl and then another. 

 Hill and valley echoed with their thrilling cries, 

 mingled with which came faintly the bark of another 

 fox. It was a long way off and in the opposite 

 direction to the first; both, it was evident, had just 

 emerged for the night's prowl, and were greeting 

 all and sundry. By the way, a fox as a rule barks 

 early in the evening, before beginning his night's 

 hunting, and it is exceptional to hear one later. 

 A fox will sometimes bark on his way home in the 

 morning, but even that is not usual. The general 

 practice is to begin soon after dark, and continue 

 at intervals for an hour or perhaps more, and then 

 go off about the business of the night. 



On the evening of which I am writing another 

 and yet another fox joined in, until it seemed as 

 if there were at least twenty barking. Most of 

 the cries came from far away, from the distant 

 woods across the valley, but one rang out quite 

 clearly, the fox was not a field's length off. Allow- 

 ing for the fact that most of the animals were on 

 the move, that not one of them would call twice 

 from the same spot, which made the number 

 barking seem much greater than it really was, 

 there must have been eight or nine calling within 

 a mile radius of the spot where I stood. " Wough ! 

 wough ! " came again the bark of the nearest fox, 

 nearer still this time, and sounding weird and 

 thrilling in the dark, through which one could see 



