The haunt of the Fox. 



THE FOX 



T 





HIS cunning and exceedingly 

 wary little animal is be- 

 loved of the huntsman, and 

 hated by the gamekeeper 

 and the hen-wife. 



A whole volume of won- 

 derful stories of its sagacity 

 might be written. I have 

 heard it asserted in widely different parts 

 of the country, by people who firmly 

 believed in it, that a Fox, when infested 

 with vermin, will secure a piece of 

 rabbit's skin, proceed to some pond or 

 stream, back slowly into the water, and 

 finally immerse himself, allowing the 

 piece of fur-clad skin to slip from between 

 his jaws and float away with its cargo of 

 cheated parasites. 



Our photogravure plate was secured 



in the following circumstances : I 

 was standing one evening watching 

 through my field-glasses some almost 

 full-grown cubs, playing like puppies 

 round the mouth of an " earth," on a 

 Surrey hilltop, some seven hundred 

 yards distant, when a gamekeeper who 

 joined me suggested that I ought to try 

 to get a photograph of them. Shaking 

 my head, I replied that it would be 

 vanity, as I required to be so close with 

 my stereoscopic camera that the animals 

 would scent me and never come out. 

 However, one day the wind was blow- 

 ing so strongly and steadily across the 

 Foxes' hole towards a thorn bush some 

 seven yards away, that I determined to 

 try my hand. 



Making a detour, I crept beneath the 



