THE FOX. 71 



side is apulse with sound, the very rushes seeming 

 to find voice and to join in the general chorus. 



SENSE OF SMELL. 



The fox is gifted with extraordinarily keen sight, 

 and, like all predatory animals capable of speed, 

 he uses it very considerably in his hunting. His 

 nostrils, however, are as well trained as those of 

 the best setter or pointer. In hunting, the general 

 trend of his direction is against the wind, and his 

 nostrils are aquiver at every step. Suddenly he 

 stops, head aloft, ears acock, one paw upraised in 

 an attitude of sculptured gracefulness freezes into 

 a statue, save for that never-ceasing quiver of the 

 nostrils. He moves a step or two to left or right, 

 tests the wind again, then slowly sinks to ground. 

 In that dense clump of heather just ahead a blue 

 hare is crouching. He cannot see it, but his nostrils 

 have marked it down to within an inch. He leaps, 

 pinning down the heather between his forepaws ; 

 then a thin-edged scream goes up, a pewit rises 

 a-wing, another follows but what matters the hub- 

 bub, now that Reynard has procured his supper? 

 He lopes easily away, and the night sentries mark 

 his going, screaming aloft. 



When Reynard and, of course, the same applies 

 to other animals hunts by scent, he must, at every 

 stride, 'watch the wind.' His exquisite sense of 

 smell would be of no value whatever to him unless 

 it were worked in conjunction with an equally 

 exquisite sense of wind -direction. Scent alone 

 could not have told him just where that blue hare 

 lay. The scent was of a potency and a property 

 which meant ' two yards away,' but it was wind- 

 direction, and wind-direction only, which marked 

 its exact whereabouts. 



