THE FOX. 57 



was often taken up by others, till it became a 

 veritable concert such as Seton describes in one 

 of his absorbing animal stories. 



TRAPPING. 



The cleverness of the fox in avoiding steel traps 

 has had no little to do with its survival in the 

 many parts of the world where it still flourishes, 

 but from which the wolves are long since gone. 

 So far as one can judge, the wolf of Great Britain 

 was an arrant ass, and of very much inferior in- 

 telligence to the gray wolf of the New World. 

 Remnants of wolf -pits still remain in various 

 parts of the country, and from these one would 

 judge that the wolf population of those days was 

 quite incapable of discriminating between the 

 most obvious sets and the natural features of 

 the landscape. In certain parts of the prairies the 

 wolves and the coyotes bid fair to outli ve the foxes, 

 probably because they are less given to attempting 

 raids on homesteads than is Reynard, confining 

 their depredations to the less-frequented alley-ways 

 of the night ; but it is little wonder that the foxes 

 of this country have long outlived the wolves 

 which once ranged the same forests. 



Foxes are quick to locate the scent of steel, 

 and fear it greatly. Every fox inherits this fear, 

 springing, as he does, from a line of ancestors to 

 whom the steel trap has been an hourly peril ; but 

 if he learns in addition what the steel trap really 

 is, then keen must be the trapper who is to outwit 

 him. 



There was an old fox which became an absolute 

 pest to one tiny village away back in the Pennines, 

 nipping up geese, ducks, and fowls in broad day- 

 light, and defying the many efforts made to bring 



