May 25, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
811 
The Ways of Foxes. 
: Editor Forest and Stream: 
It seems to me the following on the ways of 
j the fox, in a letter addressed to me, will in¬ 
terest the readers of your paper, as it has my¬ 
self. John Burroughs. 
The letter, from Will W. Christman, of Ddan- 
son, N. Y., follows: 
“My occupation as farmer has tended to 
familiarize me with many things of which you 
write. This is especially true of the fox. I have 
fought them with gun, trap and poison, and 
have had some interesting and amusing experi¬ 
ences. Every summer, usually in early morning, 
they lurk in a piece of woodland, near the barn, 
and whenever hen or chicken ventures too far 
from the buildings, it is pounced upon and carried 
away. Such a long procession of Plymouth 
( Rocks have gone in that direction, year after 
year, that I make no truce with reynard, but take 
his life in season or out, whenever opportunity 
offers. 
“Have you ever heard a fox bark in the day- 
j] time? One winter morning I saw one, a quarter 
of a mile away, sounding his ‘wood-notes wild.’ 
Again, while plowing last November, I heard 
one barking about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. 
One night I heard one barking in the pasture 
lot. I took my gun and hurried out to inter¬ 
view him. They had been in the habit of cross¬ 
ing the creek about a hundred yards from the 
. barn, so I selected this place for our meeting, 
j While getting in position I could hear him bark¬ 
ing at intervals, each time a little nearer. There 
was a few inches of light snow, but no moon, 
so that it was rather hard to pick out his foxship 
from the few small evergreens that grew near 
the ford. I stood behind a large elm, steadying 
my gun against the trunk and covering the road 
I felt sure he would take, perhaps seventy-five 
yards away. I did not have to wait. He came 
out of the protecting evergreens almost as soon 
as I was ready. It was too dark to take aim, 
; but when I felt sure I had him covered I let go. 
I It was such an unusual time for an ambush that 
S he was undoubtedly the most surprised fox re¬ 
corded in these annals. He paused just long 
enough to locate his enemy and disappeared in 
the neighboring woods. I took a lantern and fol- 
f lowed. I had wounded him, for I found an oc- 
1 casional bloodstain on the snow. He led nearly 
straight away for half a mile, then circled back 
within a hundred yards of his adventure before 
1 making a final plunge into the wilderness. I 
j think he must have gone daft with his wound 
and fright and did not know exactly where he 
was going. If he still survives he must be re¬ 
garded among his wild associates as a most 
worthy veteran, after having run the gauntlet of 
such a midnight ambuscade. 
“Hardly a season passes here without someone 
locating a den and making captive the whole 
litter. Two years aeo I accidentally discovered 
one, and with a neighbor’s help, dug them out 
' and made them secure in the corn crib. At times 
they were as playful as kittens, but they often 
fought like dogs over their food. The first 
morning after their capture I saw the old fox 
nosing around their prison. One of the young 
| died in a day or two, and my bov carried it 
! to the woods. The next afternoon when he re¬ 
turned from the pasture with the cows he in¬ 
formed me that he had found a young fox dead 
: near the scene of the capture. I thought at first 
! that it might have been one that had died in 
\ the nest, and we had overlooked it when we 
destroyed their roof tree; but after investigating 
we found it to be the one that had died in cap- 
| tivity, as the one could not be found that my 
1 youngster had disposed of. We concluded that 
j the mother had carried it back to the old home, 
a quarter of a mile or more. How unconquer¬ 
able this mother love! I must confess that I 
felt something like remorse at finding such a 
human trait in my enemy. 
“I have a neighbor who has trapped skunks 
for twenty years. I think he knows every wood¬ 
chuck hole within three or four miles. I con¬ 
ferred with him, and when April came again we 
kept a sharp lookout for another den. We spent 
the greater part of one forenoon in visiting the 
most likely holes in the neighborhood. On our 
way back, and when only a quarter of a mile 
from home, we crossed a farm that had been 
abandoned by its owner. Every summer some 
one cuts the ‘hay on shares’ and picks the apples. 
Except for the commotion on these occasions it 
is desolate and alone. As we entered the door 
yard I found a muskrat hide, freshly skinned 
on the grass, a little further on some bunches 
of rabbit’s fur. ‘Have we a fox den here?’ I 
thought. ‘Here are the usual ear marks, but it 
seemed a most unlikely spot.’ At the corner of 
the house we found a hole, probably opened by 
a woodchuck, leading directly into the founda¬ 
tion. Scattered about were hen’s feathers and 
a small pig had been poked into a crevice in 
the crumbling foundation. The pig was one that 
a neighbor had lost a few days before, and had 
been consigned to the manure heap. Now it was 
evidently held in reserve as a choice morsel for 
some wild gourmand. After a careful examina¬ 
tion of the hole and of the cellar—for the doors 
were unlocked—we plugged the opening with 
stones promising the tenants a call later in the 
day. 
“That afternon I was called away, and my 
neighbor, after waiting some time for me, started 
alone for the prize. A large strawstack stood 
near the house, sloping gradually down to where 
the machine had stood in threshing time. As 
he neared the place he saw the old fox on the 
top of the stack. From this ‘coign of vantage’ 
she could overlook the surrounding fields for 
half a mile. This was undoubtedly her ‘crow’s 
nest.’ No friend or enemy could approach un¬ 
seen. She took to her heels as my friend ap¬ 
proached. The cellar had been lathed and plas¬ 
tered, and far down in a remote corner behind 
the plastering he found them, three lively little 
fellows, about half as large as a fair-sized cat. 
and two very small ones dead. Probably some 
hound had given her chase shortly before their 
birth. This would account for the mortality 
among them. (Since then another neighbor in¬ 
forms me that he found two of the young dead 
in a hole.) We kept them in the corn crib as 
we had kept those of the year before. I think 
the old fox came nightly and prowled around 
the buildings. One of my hens had hidden her 
nest in some berry bushes between the corn crib 
and wagon house. One morning I found her 
limping around the barn yard minus her tail 
Every tail feather was pulled out and scattered 
in a bee line from her nest to the yard. Her 
eggs were cold, and she seemed to have lost all 
interest in them. I looked again next day and 
several of the eggs had disappeared. I took them 
all away and at night took a fresh egg, and 
after putting a little strychnine inside I placed 
it in the nest. That too disappeared, but it was 
several days before I knew that my experiment 
had been successful. Then my boy found the 
female fox dead in the edge of woods, less than 
a hundred yards away. 
“A few days after this event my boy and I 
were witnesses of a most remarkable fox play. 
My youngster was starting out to get the cows 
late one afternoon when I saw what I thought 
at first was a shepherd dog among them, and 
the cattle seemed to he taking turns at charg¬ 
ing him. They were perhaps two hundred and 
fifty or three hundred yards away. As I looked, 
the dog made an unusually nimble leap to avoid 
being gored and I grew suspicious. I called the 
youngster back and told him to go cautiously 
along the ridge and take a look at them from a 
rocky ledge where he could see without being 
seen. In a few minutes he returned excited and 
out of breath. It was a fox, as I suspected. I 
took my gun and we hurried along the ridge 
to witness the sport, and incidentally to have 
a little fun ourselves at reynard’s expense. We 
crept up within fifty or sixty yards of them. 
The fox behaved exactly like a strange dog 
among the herd. When one of the cows would 
charge him he would run a little way and ‘side 
step,’ then another would lower her head and 
take after him. The fox apparently enjoyed 
the excitement, but there were seven cows in the 
herd and they kept him busy dodging them. His 
conduct was extremely aggravating. He would 
sometimes stand till one almost caught him, then 
he would run and turn and provoke another to 
the chase. 1 tried several minutes to get a bead 
on him, but the cows pressed him close. Finally 
they separated far enough for me to take aim 
without endangering my Jerseys. I must have 
fired too soon, for he turned and gave us what 
I thought was a very reproachful look before be 
disappeared in the neighboring hard-hack.” 
New Publications. 
“The Spirit of Nature Study,” by Edward 
F. Bigelow, is, as he says, a book of social sug¬ 
gestion and sympathy for all who love or teach 
nature. There is much pleasing philosophy in 
Mr. Bigelow’s appeals to youths and adults, but 
now and then his sermons remind us of the old 
darky preacher at camp meeting who predicted 
fire and brimstone for all those backsliders who 
failed to come forth and be saved. Mr. Bigelow 
infers that men shoot and fish because they are 
possessed of a desire to see these creatures suffer, 
and denies that one can be a nature lover or a 
naturalist if he uses a gun, whereas the every 
effort of the sportsman is bent toward the most 
swift and painless methods of killing those 
animals that were put on earth for the sustenance 
of mankind. It is pretty generally conceded that 
the hook does not cause the fish pain, else it 
would net strike again and again after being re¬ 
leased, and the angler of to-day does not string 
his trout on a twig to die slowly, but dispatches 
them at once or puts them back in their element. 
Published by A. S. Barnes & Co., New York. 
“Bombay Ducks” may not strike the prospec¬ 
tive buyer of natural bistory books as a volume 
that would prove interesting, but in this he 
would be mistaken, for it consists of 300 pages 
of matter that is never dry or tiresome. Douglas 
Dewar, author of “Animals of No Importance,” 
and “The Indian Crow: His Book,” first pub¬ 
lished these “duck” stories in the London and 
Madras daily papers, and concluded, since some 
readers have found their voices not unpleasant, 
to give them a second quack. There is no at¬ 
tempt to make his birds and beasts perform fear¬ 
ful and wonderful acts, but in addition to describ¬ 
ing the habits of many of the animals and birds 
of India, Mr. Dewar adds little scraps of testi¬ 
mony in a popular vein showing some of their 
habits that appeal to the naturalist’s sense of 
humor. And he shies his darnick at the fabri¬ 
cators of “unnatural history,” ancient and modern, 
with no little force. There is nothing about ducks 
in the book, and the term “Bombay Ducks” 
or “dttekys.” was originally applied to European 
residents of that city, signifying bosses. The 
illustrations of birds, of which there are nearly 
fifty, are reproductions from photographs by Cap¬ 
tain F. D. S. Fayrer. They are of a high order. 
Published by the John Lane Company, London 
and New York. 
