266 
AMERICAN RED FOX. 
what is better, a rattle, similar to a watchman’s. The slanders are sent 
ahead to a narrow part of the beach, where the creeks of the salt-marshes 
approach nearest to the sand-hills : when they are supposed to have reach- 
ed their stands, the drivers enter, and walk abreast among the bushes, 
between the sand-hills and the marshes, making all the noise they can, 
with their lungs, as well as their boards or rattles ; and these unusu- 
al noises are almost sure to drive the Foxes to the slanders, where 
if they pass harmless, they have again to run the gauntlet to the 
end of the beach, at the inlet, where, Mr. Beasley assures me, he 
has known seven Red Foxes cornered, out of which four were killed, and 
three escaped from bad shooting. We made four drives in the five and 
a-half miles. 
The facts in regard to the history of the Red Fox on the Jersey coast 
that I have been able to collect, are few ; such as they are I will give 
them to you. 
Certain it is that they frequent the beaches in great numbers, and so far 
as [ can learn, the Gray Fox is not found in the same places, nor is the 
raccoon which we know to be so abundant on the sea islands and beaches 
of our southern coast. They pass to the beaches on the ice, in the winter 
season, when the “ sounds” are frozen, and have frequently been seen in the 
day time, making their passage, though doubtless it is more frequently per- 
formed in the night. Their means of subsistence there are ample, consisting 
of wild fowl of various kinds, upon which they .spring while they are asleep 
upon the ponds and creeks, but more particularly upon the wounded fowl 
which escape from the numerous gunners, also crabs and fish, which are 
thrown up dead by the surf, and rabbits and wading birds, in the summer. 
A marvellous story is told of their sagacity in selecting the food they like 
best, which is vouched for by Mr. Beasley, and all the gunners along 
shore, but which I think requires confirmation, at least so far as to have 
the fish in question, seen by some naturalist in the state, described by the 
narrators, in order to ascertain its name, or describe it, if new, before its 
publication is ventured on. The story is, that a certain fish, called the cramp- 
fish, from its supposed power of paralizing the hand which touches it while 
living, is thrown ashore dead, by the surf in the Winter season, that every 
one of these fishes contains a bird, such as the coot, (either fiisca ovper- 
spiciUatn), or a gull, which appears to have destroyed the fish, by its prov- 
ing rather hard to digest, without having been plucked. Mr. Fox finds 
the fish that has come to this deplorable end, and either in the vain hope 
of restoring animation to the unfortunate defunct, or for the gratification of 
a less noble impulse, he makes a longitudinal incision into the peritonaeum 
of the subject, and extracts the bird, of which he makes a meal ; but, mind 
