THE FOX 255 



found above ground in the New Forest. Several 

 instances have occurred when the vixen fox has 

 been seen to steal away from a furze cover, carry- 

 ing a cub in her mouth, when she has heard the 

 hounds drawing ; and nothing is more common 

 than for a vixen to remove her cubs, when they 

 have been disturbed, or the place visited by any 

 one. They have been kno"\vn to carry away a whole 

 litter two or three miles in one night, when the 

 cubs were about ten days old, about which age 

 they begin to see. 



The food of foxes, as is well known, varies in 

 different countries, except in rabbits, which they 

 always will get if they can, as they prefer them to 

 any other description of food ; and the proof of it 

 is that a bet of a hundred to one can be had 

 that every billet of a fox has rabbits' fur in it. 

 That they do prefer rabbits is easily proved to be 

 the case, by confining in some place a fox, and with 

 him a rabbit and every other sort of food, Hve or 

 dead, that can be thought of, and he will take the 

 rabbit fu'st to a certainty. This is not a great 

 reason, but the great reason why keepers disUke 

 foxes ; for every fox destroys rabbits in one year 

 sufficient to have supplied the keeper with gin ; con- 

 sequently, when he sees a fox, he loses his spirits as 



