116 WOODLAND CREATURES 



Such was the story as told me, and he added 

 that he never discovered where she took them 

 to. 



Litters of cubs vary much in number, but five 

 or six is the average. For the first few days the 

 vixen lies with her family, but she soon gives 

 that up, only visiting them as required, mean- 

 while keeping guard somewhere near, very often 

 lying just by the earth. As they grow older and 

 can see well the cubs are very like a lot of mis- 

 chievous puppies, and if the old fox lay with 

 them she would indeed have a troubled time, 

 but this she avoids, as already pointed out, by 

 taking up her station outside and visiting them 

 at intervals. 



As the appearance and development of the 

 young cubs is very fully described in the next 

 chapter, I shall have little to say about cubs here, 

 except to mention that it is astonishing the varia- 

 tion you will find within a litter. One will have 

 hardly any tag to its little brush, the next will 

 have a great deal of white, another will have quite 

 a dark coat, and the fourth will be a particularly 

 light-coloured fox. Such differences are indepen- 

 dent of sex, and one of the finest tags I have 

 seen decorated the brush of a vixen. The old 

 idea that a white tag denotes a dog-fox is quite 

 wrong. 



It has also been stated that the mountain fox 

 is a bigger and finer animal than that of the Mid- 

 lands of England ; certainly hill foxes are often 

 a large size, but we get big foxes in the lowlands 



