454? HUNTING. 



ing during the season of sexual desire, the fox is a 

 solitary, not a gregarious animal, for the most part 

 passing the day in sleep, and the night in prowling 

 after food. 



The food of the fox is extremely variable ; in- 

 deed, very few things that have or have had life 

 come amiss to him : but we have reason to believe 

 that rabbits, hares, poultry, partridges, and phea- 

 sants, with their eggs, are his favourite repasts ; 

 and when these are not to be had, he contents him- 

 self with field-mice, black-beetles, snails, and frogs. 

 That he can even exist solely on the latter, was 

 proved a few years ago, by the circumstance of a 

 fox-hound and a fox having been found at the bot- 

 tom of a dry well, into which they had fallen ; the 

 hound had perished from hunger, but the fox had 

 supported his life on frogs.* Of those animals and 

 birds which we call game, they are, without doubt, 

 destroyers — of pheasants, it is asserted, twenty- 

 live per cent. ; bat how it happens that they have 

 been charged with feeding on grapes, we are, as 

 far as our own experience directs us, quite at a loss 

 to determine. The fact, however, is stated by 

 several accredited writers, and has given birth to 

 the fable of the fox and the grapes, the moral of 

 which is a severe rebuke to an envious person who 

 " hates the excellence he cannot reach."" Aristo- 

 phanes, in his Equites, compares soldiers devastat- 

 ing a country to foxes destroying a vineyard ; and 



* The hound's leg was broken by the fall, which may account for 

 his not having killed and eaten the fox ; and it also might have has- 

 tened his own death. 



