FOXES AND FOX-F ARMING 209 



chin, and feet are black. It is a woodlander, and 

 seems incapable of adapting itself to the cleared dis- 

 tricts in which the red fox so easily makes itself at 

 home; climbs trees almost like a cat, and takes to 

 them naturally for safety or to get grapes and per- 

 simmons to eat. There, too, it makes its home in a 

 hollow stump or log, not digging a burrow, for the 

 weather of its southerly habitat, and the later date 

 of its breeding, do not require for its young the 

 warmth of an underground nursery ; and all the year 

 round it can supply itself with food by its own cun- 

 ning tricks, while the red fox must wander over many 

 miles of country. The ground-breeding birds and 

 waterfowl and their eggs form its principal fare, 

 perhaps in summer, when hens or turkeys straying 

 in the woods are likely to be seized; but rarely is 

 the poultry disturbed on the home roost, nor can. 

 such worse depredations as killing young pigs, lambs, 

 etc., be laid at its door. Audubon, whose account of 

 this to him very familiar animal is circumstantial, 

 speaks of it as a 'pilfering thief and of the red fox 

 as a 'daring and cunning plunderer.' Gray foxes 

 will run before hounds only a short distance, doubling 

 constantly and for a short time, when they either 

 ' hole ' in a tree or climb one ; while a red fox may run 

 straight eight or ten miles away and then back in a 

 parallel course. 



"Extremely interesting is the arctic fox, of the 

 polar regions right round the world. It is a shy, 

 swift little beast with blunt nose, short rounded ears, 

 a very long bushy tail, and the soles of its feet well 



