WOOL- AND FUR-BEARING ANIMALS 263 



on the support they get from her body. For at least ten weeks they 

 are quite incapable of getting their own living, and are supported 

 by both parents. 



The Dog Fox does the greater part towards getting food, but in 

 the event of the vixen being killed he has no further interest in the 

 family, and leaves them to starve to death. This is not so if death 

 overtakes the dog, for the mother will keep the family going single- 

 handed. While watching the Dog Fox bring food, he has been seen 

 to leave it on the earth, but more often he meets the vixen some 

 distance away with it. 



One evening a friend of mine was going to visit a Fox earth 

 two miles distant where there were cubs. On his way, and not more 

 than one hundred yards from his house, a white Pheasant was sitting 

 on her eggs in a hedge-bottom. He gave a glance and saw her 

 there as he passed. He had not been in sight of the earth more than 

 two minutes when he saw the vixen come out and trot down the wood- 

 ride in the direction he had come from. To his surprise and annoy- 

 ance in less than five minutes she returned with his white Pheasant 

 in her mouth. This clearly shows that the Dog Fox killed the bird 

 immediately after the keeper had left her on the nest, and met the 

 vixen with it. 



Upon my friend's return, he not only found the bird gone, but 

 the eggs too! The Fox, no doubt, had "champed" these up, and 

 would probably disgorge them for the vixen when delivering up 

 the bird. 



It is very curious that a vixen with cubs nearly always gets the 

 food supply from a distance, although there may be easy means of 

 getting it near the earth. Mr. Bamford tells me that he has many 

 times seen Pheasants and Partridges sitting on their eggs within a 

 hundred yards of an earth without being molested, while in a neigh- 

 bourhood a mile or two away every bird has been taken as soon 

 as they started sitting ! Rabbits, too, in plenty were occupying 

 burrows within a few yards from the earth, yet these were not inter- 

 fered with. Why this is so appears difiScult to explain, unless it is 

 that there shall be a good supply of food close at home when the 

 cubs are first learning to catch the same on their own account. One 

 good authority on Foxes says he is of opinion the vixen does not kill 

 her prey near home to avoid causing any disturbance which might act 

 as an advertisement to disclose the situation of her earth, and perhaps 

 lead to her own destruction. There may be something in this; if so. 



