HOME AND HAUNTS OF THE FOX 89 



a pig, a fox, another pig, a second fox, and then the 

 hares. ' C. R.,' whose remarks are practical, and whose 

 observations and experiences with artificial coverts 

 agree with my own, remarks on the excellence of 

 spruce-fir coverts. One reason why a fox likes spruce 

 trees is because they often grow in strange forms 

 and are easy to climb. Foxes are very fond of climb- 

 ing trees when they can, but the trunk must have 

 a slight slope. In Australia, the foxes are accused 

 of the destruction of the beautiful lyre-bird. It is 

 said that they run up the trees and destroy the 

 nests, and this seems quite probable. There is 

 nothing a fox will not eat, and nothing within his 

 power that he will not do. His intelligence is 

 generally equal to the occasion, and if a fox found 

 himself where trees were, with his powers to climb, 

 or perhaps, more correctly, to run or scramble up, 

 and birds' nests in those trees which afforded that 

 greatest of all fox delicacies, an egg just on the point 

 of hatching, it would not be long before he became 

 partly arboreal in his habits. 



Gorse coverts are favourite ones for foxes. There 

 are few countries which have not some gorse coverts, 

 the very name of which is suggestive of sport. Not 

 all coverts which are called ' gorses ' are now planted 

 with furze, and not a few blackthorn coverts are to be 



