TRACKS IN THE SAND 57 



two of them side by side. It was probably a 

 family party, and the young were full grown, 

 as all the tracks were about the same size. 



I once had an opportunity to measure the 

 speed of a fox. As I was motoring along the 

 road one evening at Ipswich, with searchlights 

 burning, a splendid red fox bounded ahead of 

 the automobile, his white tail-tip glistening like 

 a target. He was evidently confused by the 

 lights and darted first to one side and then to 

 the other side of the road, but finally, after a run 

 of about two hundred yards, he turned in to the 

 bushes on the left. In following the chase I had 

 speeded up to thirty miles an hour, but did not 

 gain on him. I have found, by measuring the 

 tracks of another bounding fox, that his feet 

 spread out in a line to a distance of three feet, 

 and that the distance between the jumps was 

 five to seven feet. 



On a June day I came across a fox's track in 

 the dunes with a deep groove running along close 

 beside it. I followed it for two or three hundred 

 yards till it entered a thicket of poplars not 

 more than thirty or forty yards in circumfer- 



