/f *-• 
''Damsdale rl 
Tracks and 
food of 
Foxes 
the open tussocky meadows bordering brooks. They had 
quartered nearly every square rod of the Damsdale meadow 
and had dug innumerable holes through the snow to the ground 
in pursuit of Mice. In one place I found the entrails, 
in another the entrails and back with some skin and fur, 
of a Mouse by the side of one of these holes. In a third 
hole was a Mouse’s nest torn open and scattered about on 
the crust. 
Many tracks on a pine-clad hillside led into a 
beautiful little bower formed by the snow-laded branches 
of a young bushy pine touching the ground on every side, 
leaving within } about the stem of the tree } an open space 
so high that I could stand erect there. Under this bower 
the snow was trampled down perfectly hard and smooth. It 
was smeared over with blood and sprinkled with minute 
pieces of hard, jagged bones which were certainly not those 
of any bird nor of any of our small mammals and which I 
took to be fragments of beef or mutton bones. There were 
no other animal remains whatever but in a neighboring 
opening within about eight feet of a small, dense pine the 
surface of the snow was covered with the wing and tail 
feathers and some of the breast fee.thers, also, of a Blue 
Jay. The wing and tail feathers had all been bitten^ off, 
near their bases. I examined every one and there was not 
a single exception. How did the Fox catch this bird? I 
found two tail feathers directly under the pine but the wind 
