Iv 
BEAUTY OF THE FOX 
Ir is only by a fortunate chance, a rare conjunction 
of circumstances, that we are able to see any wild 
animal at its best. And by animal it must be 
explained is here meant a hair-clothed vertebrate 
that suckles its young and goes on four feet. 
Chiefly on this account it would be hard in any 
company of men well acquainted with our fauna 
to find two persons to agree as to which is the 
handsomest or prettiest of our indigenous mammals. 
Undoubtedly the stag, one would exclaim: 
another would perhaps venture to name the field- 
mouse, or the dormouse, or the water-vole, that 
quaint miniature beaver in his _sealskin-coloured 
coat, sitting erect on the streamlet’s margin 
busily nibbling at the pale end of a polished rush 
stalk which he has cut off at the root and is now 
holding clasped to his breast with his little hands. 
Any one who had thus seen him, the brown sunlit 
bank, with its hanging drapery of foliage and 
flowers for background, reflected in the clear water 
below, could well be pardoned for praising his 
beauty and giving him the palm. Another would 
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