IV 



THE FOX 



T HAVE already spoken of the fox at some 

 -■- length, but it -will take a chapter by itself to do 

 half justice to his portrait. 



He furnishes, perhaps, the only instance that can 

 be cited of a fur-bearing animal that not only holds 

 its own, but that actually increases in the face of 

 the means that are used for its extermination. The 

 beaver, for instance, was gone before the earliest 

 settlers could get a sight of him ; and even the mink 

 and marten are now only rarely seen, or not seen at 

 all, in places where they were once abundant. 



But the fox has survived civilization, and in 

 some localities is no doubt more abundant now than 

 in the time of the Revolution. For half a century 

 at least he has been almost the only prize, in the 

 way of fur, that was to be found on our mountains, 

 and he has been hunted and trapped and waylaid, 

 sought for as game and pursued in enmity, taken by 

 fair means and by foul, and yet there seems not the 

 slightest danger of the species becoming extinct. 



One would think that a single hpund in a neigh- 

 borhood, filling the mountains with his hayings, and 

 leaving no nook or byway of them unexplored, was 



