Part 31

The sharp-faced fox is a very epitome of cunning, and his name is a by-word for slyness. Farmers know well that no fox, nestling close to their houses, ever meddles with their poultry. Reynard rambles a good way from home before he begins to plunder. How admirable is Professor Wilson's description of fox-hunting, quoted here from the "Noctes." Sir Walter Scott, in one of his topographical essays, has given a curious account of the way in which a fox, acquainted with the "ins and outs" of a certain old castle, outwitted a whole pack of dogs, who had to jump up singly to get through a small window to which Reynard led them. His large tail, so bushy and so free, is of great use to Reynard. He often brushes the eyes of his pursuers with it when sprinkled with water anything but sweet, and which, by its pungency, for a time blinds them. The pursuit of the fox is most exciting, and turns out the lord "of high degree," and the country squire and farmer. It is the most characteristic sport of the "better classes" in this country.

AN ENTHUSIASTIC FOX-HUNTING SURGEON.

A medical gentleman, named Hansted, residing near Newbury, who was very fond of fox-hunting, ordered his gardener to set a trap for some vermin that infested his garden. As ill luck would have it, a fox was found in the morning with his leg broken, instead of a plant-eating rabbit. The gardener took Reynard to the doctor, when he exclaimed, "Why did you not call me up in the night, that I might have set the leg?" Better late than never: the surgeon set the leg; the fox recovered, and was killed in due form, after a capital run.

FOX-HUNTING.

(From the "Noctes Ambrosianæ," April 1826.)

North. It seems fox-hunting, too, is cruel.

Shepherd. To wham? Is't cruel to dowgs, to feed fifty or sixty o' them on crackers and ither sorts o' food, in a kennel like a Christian house, wi' a clear burn flowin' through 't, and to gie them, twice a-week or aftener, during the season, a brattlin rin o' thretty miles after a fox? Is that cruelty to dowgs?

North. But the fox, James?

Shepherd. We'll come to the fox by and by. Is't cruel to horses, to buy a hundred o' them for ae hunt, rarely for less than a hundred pounds each, and aften for five hundred--to feed them on five or sax feeds o' corn per diem--and to gie them skins as sleek as satin--and to gar them nicher (neigh) wi' fu'ness o' bluid, sae that every vein in their bodies starts like sinnies (sinews)--and to gallop them like deevils in a hurricane, up hill and doun brae, and loup or soom canals and rivers, and flee ower hedges, and dikes, and palings, like birds, and drive crashin' through woods, like elephants or rhinoceroses--a' the while every coorser flingin' fire-flaughts (flakes) frae his een, and whitening the sweat o' speed wi' the foam o' fury--I say, ca' you that cruelty to horses, when the hunt charge with all their chivalry, and plain, mountain, or forest are shook by the quadrupedal thunder?

North. But the fox, James?

Shepherd. We'll come to the fox by and by. Is 't cruel to men to inspirit wi' a rampagin happiness fivescore o' the flower o' England or Scotland's youth, a' wi' caps and red coats, and whups in their hauns--a troop o' lauchin, tearin', tallyhoin' "wild and wayward humorists," as the doctor ca'd them the tither Sunday?

North. I like the expression, James.

Shepherd. So do I, or I would not have quoted it. But it's just as applicable to a set o' outrageous ministers, eatin' and drinkin', and guffawin' at a Presbytery denner.

North. But the fox, James?

Shepherd. We'll come to the fox by and by. Is't cruel to the lambs, and leverets, and geese, and turkeys, and dyucks, and patricks, and wee birds, and ither animal eatables, to kill the fox that devoors them, and keeps them in perpetual het water?

North. But the fox, James?

Shepherd. Deevil take baith you and the fox; I said that we would come to the fox by and by. Weel, then, wha kens that the fox isna away snorin' happy afore the houn's? I hae nae doubt he is, for a fox is no sae complete a coward as to think huntin' cruel; and his haill nature is then on the alert, which in itsel' is happiness. Huntin' him fa'in into languor and ennui, and growin' ower fat on how-towdies (barn-door fowls). He's no killed every time he's hunted.

North. Why, James, you might write for the "Annals of Sporting."

Shepherd. So I do sometimes--and mair o' ye than me, I jalouse; but I was gaun to ask ye if ye could imagine the delicht o' a fox gettin' into an undiggable earth, just when the leadin' houn' was at his hainches?--ae sic moment is aneuch to repay half an hour's draggle through the dirt; and he can lick himsel' clean at his leisure, far ben in the cranny o' the rock, and come out a' tosh and tidy by the first dawn o' licht, to snuff the mornin' air, and visit the distant farm-house before Partlet has left her perch, or Count Crow lifted his head from beneath his oxter on his shed-seraglio.

North. Was ye ever in at a death? Is not that cruel?

Shepherd. Do you mean in at the death o' ae fox, or the death o' a hundred thousand men and sixty thousand horses?--the takin' o' a Brush, or a Borodino?

North. My dear James, thank ye for your argument. As one Chalmers is worth a thousand Martins, so is one Hogg worth a thousand Chalmerses.

Shepherd. Ane may weel lose patience, to think o' fules being sorry for the death o' a fox. When the jowlers tear him to pieces, he shows fecht, and gangs aff in a snarl. Hoo could he dee mair easier?--and for a' the gude he has ever dune, or was likely to do, he surely had leeved lang eneuch.

ARCTIC FOX (Vulpes lagopus).

This inoffensive and pretty little creature is found in all parts of the Arctic lands. Its fur is peculiarly fine and thick; and as in winter this is closer and more mixed with wool than it is in summer, the intense cold of these regions is easily resisted. When sleeping rolled up into a ball, with the black muzzle buried in the long hairs of the tail, there is not a portion of the body but what is protected from the cold, the shaggy hairs of the brush acting as a respirator or boa for the mouth and a muff for the paws. Our Arctic travellers have remarked, that it is a peculiarly cleanly animal, and its vigilance is extreme. It is almost impossible to come on it unawares, for even when appearing to be soundly asleep, it opens its eyes on the slightest noise being made. During the day it appears to be listless, but no sooner has the night set in than it is in motion, and it continues very active until morning. The young migrate to the southward in the autumn, and sometimes collect in great numbers on the shores of Hudson's Bay. Mr Graham noticed that they came there in November and left in April.

Sir James Ross found a fox's burrow on the sandy margin of a lake in the month of July. It had several passages, each opening into a common cell, beyond which was an inner nest, in which the young, six in number, were found. These had the dusky, lead-coloured livery worn by the parents in summer; and though four of them were kept alive till the following winter, they never acquired the pure white coats of the old fox, but retained the dusky colour on the face and sides of the body. The parents had kept a good larder for their progeny, as the outer cell and the several passages leading to it contained many lemmings and ermines, and the bones of fish, ducks, and hares, in great quantities. Sir John Richardson observed them to live in villages, twenty or thirty burrows being constructed close to each other. A pair were kept by Sir James Ross for the express purpose of watching the changes which take place in the colour of their fur. He noticed that they threw off their winter dress during the first week in June, and that this change took place a few days earlier in the female than in the male. About the end of September the brown fur of the summer gradually became of an ash colour, and by the middle of October it was perfectly white. It continued to increase in thickness until the end of November. A variety of a blackish-brown colour is occasionally met with, but this is rare: such specimens, Ross remarks, must have extreme difficulty in surprising their prey in a country whose surface is of an unvaried white, and must also be much more exposed to the persecutions of their enemies. The food of this fox is various, but seems to consist principally of lemmings and of birds and their eggs. He eats, too, the berries of the Empetrum nigrum, a plant common on our own hills, and goes to the shore for mussels and other shell-fish. Otho Fabricius says he catches the Arctic salmon as that fish approaches the shore to spawn, and that he seizes too the haddock, having enticed it near by beating the water. Crantz, in his "History of Greenland," evidently alludes to this cunning habit when he observes, "They plash with their feet in the water, to excite the curiosity of some kinds of fishes to come and see what is going forward, and then they snap them up; and the Greenland women have learnt this piece of art from them." Captain Lyon noticed a fox prowling on a hill-side, and heard him for some hours afterwards in the neighbourhood imitating the cry of the brent-goose. In another part of his Journal he mentions that the bark is so modulated as to give an idea that it proceeds from a distance, though at the time the fox lies at your feet. It struck him that the creature was gifted "with this kind of ventriloquism in order to deceive its prey as to the distance it is from them." It sometimes catches the ptarmigan; and though it cannot swim, it manages occasionally to get hold of oceanic birds; in fact, nothing alive which it can master seems to come amiss, and failing to make a meal from something it has caught and killed, the Arctic fox is glad, like foxes in more favoured lands, to feed on carrion.

Captain M'Clintock, who commanded the yacht Fox on the Franklin Arctic search in 1857 and 1858, wintered in the ice pack of Baffin's Bay. One of the party shot an Arctic fox when they were 140 miles from the land. He records in a letter to his brother, that this wanderer from the shore "was very fat, living upon such few dovekies as were silly enough to spend their winter in the pack."

Martens, in his "Spitzbergen," says, that some of the ship's crew informed him, that the fox when he is hungry "lies down as if he was dead, until the birds fly to him to eat him, which by that trick he catches and eats." Our author believed it a fable, but it may nevertheless be one of the many expedients used by a species of a group whose name is proverbial for craftiness and cunning.