THE FOX. 455 



Oalen {De Aliment.^ lib. iii., c. 2,) tells us, that 

 hunters ate the flesh of foxes in Autumn, because 

 they were grown fat with feeding on grapes. There 

 are also two lines in Theocritus, {Idyl. E., v. 112,) 

 which admit of the following version : — 



I hate those brush-tailed foxes, that each night 

 Spoil Micon's ^dneya^ds with their deadly bite. 



He is likewise accused of eating human flesh, and, 

 we have reason to believe, accused justly. In ad- 

 dition to the sentence pronounced by David in the 

 sixty-third psalm, that the enemies of God and 

 himself should be " a portion for foxes," we have 

 the followino^ interesting: historical anecdote. When 

 the famous Messenian general Aristomenes was 

 thrown into the Ceadas (a deep chasm into which 

 criminals were hurled) by the Lacedaemonians, his 

 life is said to have been preserved by following a 

 fox that was feeding on a dead body, to the aper- 

 ture at which he had entered, and through which, 

 after enlarging it with his hands, he himself 

 escaped. 



But although the subtlety of the fox has been 

 proverbial from the earliest times ; so much so, 

 that our Saviour himself called the tetrarch Herod 

 " a fox," by way of signifying the refinement of 

 his policy ; we do not perceive that, with the excep- 

 tion of a timid prudence on breaking cover, he 

 shows more sagacity in his endeavours to baffle his 

 pursuers than the hare is known to do, if indeed so 

 much. To " catch a weasel asleep," is a typical 

 designation of an impossibility ; but foxes are fre- 



