282 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
be tom to pieces. But it was quite another affair, the hare con- 
tinues to ciy out, and its voice sounds more distant as I approach 
the spot. Curious to have the key of the enigma, I hurry toward 
a neighboring hedge where the animal must pass, and the mys- 
tery clears up. What do I see ? A fox passing twenty paces 
from me, dragging the unfortunate hare by the neck, and very 
much hindered, as you may suppose, by the weight of his plun- 
der. Such impudence deserved punishment ; the guilty one did 
not wait a second for it. The scamp had had the audacity to 
run at the voice of my dogs to meet the hare and carry it off 
under their beards, less than three hundred yards from its start ! 
I have already mentioned that the fox, so cunning when he 
hunts on his own account, cannot defend himself against iunni*g 
dogs any better than prevaricating bakers before the magistrate. 
It is the fox which, in battues, first comes in range of your gun ; 
he does not turn back on those who are beating the bushes, like 
the wild boar, the wolf, and the roebuck. He is easily taken in 
snares and traps. He is poisoned with balls of meat seasoned 
with nux vomica. I advise, for this procedure, the body of the 
mole, saturated with strychnine. The fox being the only animal 
which devours the dead mole, we run no risk, as with other baits, 
of poisoning dogs. 
It sometimes happens that the fox, taken in a snare, cour- 
ageously amputates the imprisoned paw, and saves himself on the 
three that remain. 
An old writer recommends, to avoid this mischance, that the 
steel-trap should be fastened to a stone, which the fox might drag 
after him to a certain distance, so that this operation may amuse 
him and dissipate all ideas of suicide from his mind. 
The fox is an evil beast, with a hard life and a venomous tooth. 
JSTever put your foot upon his throat before being well assured 
that he is perfectly dead. More than one imprudent hunter has 
been a victim of his airs of death, which he affects so as to carry 
his cunning to the very grave. 
Some years ago the wood-cutters having unearthed a fox at 
Bazin, he was knocked in the head, and lay on the ground showing 
no signs of life. Now the forest-master, who had assisted at the 
