FOXES AND OTHER NEIGHBORS 237 



den not more than three hundred yards back from 

 the road, on top of a rocky nub covered with large 

 sugar-maples and trailing bittersweet-vines, in the 

 open ground. It was quite fresh and constantly 

 occupied, for a plain path led away from it through 

 the vines to the field below. This path was about 

 ten inches wide, and perfectly plain to a casual 

 glance. Probably the puppies had been using it all 

 summer (it was August 1st when I found it). I 

 have waited patiently near by many an hour since, 

 when I should have been working, for a sight of 

 them, but so far in vain. About six feet from this 

 fresh burrow is an old burrow, last year's apparently, 

 and just outside the mouth, on the upper side, is a 

 pile of bleached bones six inches high and a foot 

 across. There were at least three chicken wish- 

 bones in the pile. Yet the farmer of whom I bought 

 the place had an active and sagacious dog. I sup- 

 pose when I get the farm stocked again I, too, shall 

 pay tribute. But I shall make the old fox reward 

 me with a puppy for a pet. 



Did you ever have a little fox for a pet? No 

 animal on earth has such a bright, sagacious face — 

 as, indeed, no animal on earth is so sagacious, so 

 capable of reasoning and of applying experience to 

 new combinations of circumstances, which is but 

 the proof of reasoning. When I was a little boy of 

 six or seven I had a pet fox all one blissful summer. 

 He was one of a litter captured by a farmer, and 

 had been raised by hand. The rest died, but by 

 late June, when he came into my possession, this 

 little fellow was a hardy, active, well-formed foxling, 

 with a big, swinging tail and the two brightest, 



