256 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



Fox of America is entitled to the glory of such high descent, 

 While the other sturdily contends that our Fox is an abori- 

 ginal Fox, and by no means deserving of such hard names as 

 Chaucer used with regard to the English Fox. 



This dispute is rather curious and amusing than serious. I 

 shall look over some of the grounds of this interesting contro- 

 versy. One party contends most earnestly that it is the 

 European Fox, which was brought over by one of the Conti- 

 nental Grovernors, who was an ardent sportsman,' and who 

 turned a pair or more loose to breed on Long Island ; that 

 finally they escaped, they or their descendants, over to the 

 main land, and have since migrated South and West. 



The other party contends that it is a native species, and 

 comes from the North, migrating — as many other species of 

 quadrupeds and birds, as well as nations of men have done — 

 towards the South. 



The last argument appears to me to be the true one, be- 

 cause, in the first place, although there are many points of 

 general resemblance, which might deceive any but careful 

 Naturalists, yet it has been found, when the two animals 

 have been brought together and critically compared by them, 

 that they are quite clearly distinct. This, of itself, ought to 

 be enough to settle the question; but when we come to 

 remember, in the second place, that the Red Fox and all its 

 varieties is a Northern animal, and that from its cunning and 

 sagacity, it would always make a convenience of the neigh- 

 borhood of man, for the purpose of preying upon his domesti- 

 cated creatures, we can well understand how its progress 

 South should have been quite as gradual as that of well 

 stocked barn-yards and fat flocks of geese. 



The case is to me a perfectly plain one ; and the answer to 

 the multiplied inquiries I hear from old sportsmen — "Wheth'er 

 it is that the Red Fox has degenerated, or that our hounds, 

 through careful breeding, have been appreciated in speed ? — 

 since it is true that the Red Fox is now taken with ease in 



