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 Governors, 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, te- 
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—‘“ Whether 
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 
