FOX. | NATURAL HISTORY. 121 
Tue Fox takes the juice which flows from the pine-tree 
into his food, and so recovers his health and prolongs his 
life. When hungry, he imitates the barking of a dog. 
Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. ch. clix. 
SERPENTS, apes and Foxes, and all other dangerous, 
harmful beasts have small eyes, but sheep and oxen, which 
are simple, very great eyes. The Fox with his breath 
draweth field-mice out of their holes, like as a hart draweth 
out serpents with his breath, and devoureth them, In 
Arabia and Palestine they are so ravenous that in the night 
they fear not to carry into their dens old shoes and vessels, 
or instruments of husbandry. But if a Fox eat any meat 
wherein are bitter almonds [or aloes] they die thereof if 
they drink not presently. If wild rue be secretly hung 
under a hen’s wing, no Fox will meddle with her. In some 
places they take upon them to take him [the Fox] with 
nets, which seldom proveth, because with his teeth he 
teareth them in pieces. The French have a kind of gin to 
take by the legs, and I have heard of some which have 
found the Fox’s leg in the same gin, bitten off with his 
own teeth from his body; other have counterfeited them- 
selves dead, restraining their breath and winking, not 
stirring any member when they saw the hunter come to 
take them out of the gin [and] so soon as the Fox per- 
ceiveth himself free, away he went, and never gave thanks 
for his deliverance. With his tail he draweth fishes to the 
brim of the river, and when that he observeth a good 
booty, he casteth the fishes clean out of the water upon 
the dry land, and then devoureth them. The tongue [of 
a Fox] either dried or green, laid to the flesh wherein 1s 
any dart or other sharp head, it draweth them forth 
violently. The liver dried and drunk cureth often-sighing. 
Topsell, “* Four-footed Beasts,” pp. 174-9. 
A Fox will not touch any cocks, hens, or such like 
pullen, that have eaten (before) the dried liver of a Rey- 
nard, nor those hens which a cock, having a collar about 
his neck of a Fox-skin, hath trodden. 
Holland’s Pliny, bk, xxviii, ch. xx. 
V. also Brock. 
