* S6 BEACH GRASS 



It may be said that this fox really saw me 

 and was playing with me as foxes sometimes do, 

 and thus allowed me to approach as I did. I 

 hardly think this was the case, for, until the 

 final spring and straightaway run, he showed no 

 evidence of realizing what I was, and did not 

 run along the beach ahead of me as would 

 have been the case if he were trying to decoy me 

 on in play. 



The beach is a good feeding ground for the 

 fox, but his visits to this region at low tide — 

 broad as it is and lacking in any shelter — are gen- 

 erally made at night and are unseen in the dark- 

 ness. If the tide is low in the night the tracks 

 of foxes coming up from the beach are common 

 the next morning. At ten o'clock one November 

 morning, when the tide had been low at three 

 and was then an hour in ebb, I came upon the 

 tracks of four foxes that had trotted down from 

 the dunes and were lost in the narrow strip of 

 beach swept clean by the tide. Three of these 

 had trotted down together, the fourth, some fifty 

 yards further off. All four foxes returned to the 

 dunes two or three hundred yards down the beach, 



