190 
FOX. 
form holes many feet in length, strewing the bot- 
tom with moss. Two or three inhabit the same 
hole. In Lapland, and the northern parts of Asia, 
these animals feed principally upon the Leming 
rat, a little migratory animal that occasionally leaves 
its country to seek an existence elsewhere. This 
accounts for the desertion of the foxes, who some- 
times are gone for three or four years, and are pro- 
bably in search of their prey. Their skins form 
an article of traffic, and many come from Greenland, 
where the natives have various ways of catching 
them. They are either taken in pit-falls dug in 
the snow and baited with fish, or in springs made 
with whalebone laid over a hole in the snow, 
and the bottom baited in the same manner ; or in 
traps, made like little huts, with flat stones, so con- 
trived that, when the fox enters and takes the bait, 
one of them falls upon him and prevents his retreat. 
The blue furs are the most costly. 
The manners of the fox are nearly the same in all 
countries : full of craftiness and address, they will 
execute that by cunning which the larger animals 
accomplish by force. Our common species, which 
is too well known to the farmers of this country, 
does not fall short in roguish abilities, and will 
listen to the crowing of cocks and the cries of 
poultry, till a proper opportunity offers of carrying 
a few of them off. He is equally attentive to the 
nets of the bird-catcher, which he will visit every 
morning, and remove the birds that are entangled 
to a secret spot, where he will hide them for two or 
