126 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



If there be a fox anywhere, even in the Campagna at 

 Rome, and there are sufficient Englishmen to get up a 

 scratch pack of hounds, there must " bold Reynard " be 

 tortured with fear and exertion, only, in all probability, 

 to die a cruel death in the end. In the Peninsular War, 

 a pack of foxhounds accompanied the army ; in India, 

 failing foxes, they take the nearest substitute, the jackal ; 

 and in Australia, fautc de mieux, they hunt the Dingo, or 

 native dog. No properly constituted Englishman could 

 ever compass the death of a poor fox, otherwise than 

 by hunting. The Vulpecide in any other manner 

 is, in an English county, a social leper he is a thing 

 anathema. Running away with a neighbour's wife may be 

 condoned by county society, at least, among the men, but 

 with them the man that shoots foxes is a very pariah, 

 and it were good for that man had he never been born. 



Every other nation, even from historic antiquity, has 

 reckoned the Fox as among the ordinary fcrcc naturae, 

 to be killed, when met with, for the sake only of his 

 skin, for his flesh is not toothsome : and when he 

 arrives at the dignity of a silver or a black fox, his fur 

 enwraps royal personages, as being of extreme value. 



The Fox is noted everywhere for its " craftiness" and 

 was so famed long before the epic of Reineke Fuchs 

 was evolved, and, indeed, this may be said to be its 

 principal attribute. Many are the stories told by country 

 firesides of his stratagems, both in plundering and in 

 his endeavours to escape from his enemies. Indeed, no 

 country ought to be able to compare in Fox lore with 

 our own. Its sagacity, cunning, or call it what you like, 

 dates far back. Pliny tells us that " in Thrace, when 

 all parts are covered with ice, the foxes are consulted, 

 an animal, which, in other respects, is baneful from its 



