206 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



Once when I was visiting my friend Mr. R. Kirkham in 

 Lincolnshire, he took me one day back on his farm to see 

 a litter of cubs that he was very proud of. He was afraid, 

 however, the vixen was not a good milker, for the cubs did 

 not seem to be doing as well as he thought they should. 

 Perhaps, he added, Mrs. Fox may have been left a widow ; 

 so we took with us a basin of chicken bones and scraps 

 of meat, and left them at the poor vixen's door. 



" I don't want to do this sort of thing too much," he 

 said apologetically, probably because the pan was not full. 

 " It won't do to encourage idleness, you know. Foxes, to 

 be kept in good health, must have work. Besides, I want 

 them to be very fit when the hunting season opens, so as to 

 give us the run of the season." 



Such are the sentiments of an English tenant-farmer, 

 who seldom rides to hounds himself but who is the right 

 sort nevertheless. Mr. Kirkham gives a most interesting 

 account of the habits of foxes ; he has evidently spent con- 

 siderable time in looking after the widows. 



"I often come up here to see how they are getting on," 

 he says, "and sometimes I am able to steal up and get a 

 sight of them playing about the earth like a lot of kittens. 

 One will pretend to be dead. He lies stretched out, ap- 

 parently cold and stiff as a corpse, and with his eyes closed, 

 though I think he keeps them a wee crack open. The 

 breeze plays with his hair, and altogether there never was an 

 act done truer to life, or, I should say, death. Seeing this, 

 another cub approaches cautiously, when up springs the 

 dead one, and the pair clinch and roll over in a good- 

 natured wrestling match. This is only the rehearsal of the 



