A LARGE LITTER 169 



to me, appeai'fd in my delighted eyes to have been made by 

 StoiT and Mortimer. I never saw such darlings ! As is often 

 seen in a litter of pigs, in this case there were two not much 

 bigger than rats, and their coats of a dappled blue, cubs in 

 miniature, but so weak that they staggered in their play. The 

 whole litter were mean in condition, the old vixen not being 

 able to make enough milk. Leaving them to solace in the sun- 

 beam I stole away, and, having shot a rabbit, came back and 

 dropped a portion of it among them. Oh, what commotion and 

 yells it produced ! with a shriek of terror they bolted one over 

 the other into the eai-th. The wind set from the paunch of the 

 rabbit direct into their home, — so I watched ; and not a minute 

 had elapsed before I descried a little picked nose winding up 

 into the air: it scented the viands, and rushed to the feast. 

 Cub after cub then came out, and there was as much outcry in 

 fighting to obtain a portion of the rabbit as there was in the 

 terror occasioned by its sudden fall. From that time these cubs 

 were regularly fed, and, for all I know, they were every one 

 reared to maturity. This was the largest litter I ever knew of, 

 or heard mentioned. People who are ignorant of the nature of 

 the fox might suppose it was a double litter, the offspring of 

 two vixen foxes, but it was not so ; but one brace of foxes 

 attended them, and they were the sire and dam. In the whole 

 course of my experience I never knew two vixens in their wild 

 and thoroughly natui-al state lay up their cubs even near each 

 other. A vixen, when she has a litter, keeps what may be called 

 a walk to herself; and if, as I proved in Bedfordshire, an arti- 

 ficial litter of cubs is turned into a made earth or faggot pile 

 too near her, the wild vixen will kill or won-y them. A litter 

 of foxes change their playgrounds, and people often mistake the 

 using of one litter for that of two. 



Having observed that Mr. Wyndham's hounds stood on too 

 much ceremony with their foxes, and dreamed that I saw one of 

 his hounds by accident meet a fox in cover, when the pack had 

 been running twenty minutes, and bow to him and beg his 

 pardon for being anywhere but behind him, I resolved secretly 



