THE COMMON FOX. 189 



fail, and he is at last overtaken, he defends himself with much 

 obstinacy, and silently fights till he is torn to pieces by the 

 merciless dogs. No less than 5796 foxes are recorded, in the 

 Swedish States Gazette, to have been killed in Sweden during the 

 year 18<28. 



" I know not," says Lord Brougham, " if the cunning of the 

 fox was ever more remarkably displayed than in the Duke of 

 Beaufort's country, where one of these animals, being hard 

 pressed, disappeared suddenly, and was, after strict search, 

 found immersed in a water pool up to the very snout, by which 

 he held a willow bough hanging over the pond." 



It has been often asserted that the fox gets rid of its fleas by 

 grasping a wisp of hay or a bit of wool in its mouth, walking 

 backwards into the water, and letting go of this burden when 

 the fleas have crept into it to save themselves from drowning j 

 but Dr. Weissenborn remarks, that this artificial way of pro- 

 ceeding " may easily be shown to be a fiction, as the fleas will 

 not gradually recede from the water and assemble on the head 

 of the animal which is slowly submerged from the tail upwards. 

 Otherwise, there is nothing in the alleged expedient that must 

 at once refute it j for the fox does many things by way of 

 experiment, as it were ; and if any well- authenticated fact of 

 the fox having simulated death, as it has been frequently said 

 to have done,* for the purpose of escaping from danger, could 

 be adduced, it must, I think, be explained on the experimental, 

 not the instinctive principle. In an animal which often employs 

 such unexpected and original means, we may even suppose that 

 one individual will, cceteris paribus, not behave like the other, 

 but that there exist in the species, to a certain degree, gradations 

 of reasoning power." 



The femalef brings forth four or five whelps at a litter in April, 



* The notion of the fox counterfeiting death to obtain an opportunity of 

 escaping, is as old as the time of Olaus Magnus, who says " In super finget 

 se mortuam," &c. (lib. xviii. cap. 39). Lovell says, that " if taken by the foot, 

 the fox will bite it off to escape ; but if it cannot, it will seem to be dead." 

 (Panzoologia, 1661, p. 52.) 



f Steevens, the dramatic commentator, says, that " vixen or fixen" pri- 



