File:The fox (1906) (14783841162).jpg

Identifier: foxdale00dale (find matches)
Title: The fox
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Dale, T. F. (Thomas Francis), 1858-1923
Subjects: Foxes Hunting
Publisher: London New York Bombay : Longmans, Green, and Co.
Contributing Library: Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Tufts University

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ow and a litter of piglings. No onethought of looking there, but a farm lad going tofeed the pigs in the morning saw the fox come outand with a gay swish of his brush canter off. But no doubt there comes a moment when, at theend of a long chase, his strength exhausted and wilesexpended, a sense of his fate reaches him. Whenhis enemies, the crows and magpies, swoop andchatter over his head, and the cry of the hounds takesa shriller, angrier note, in tones which in the junglelanguage speak of their eagerness for blood in a waythat he understands, then, doubtless, he realises hisdanger. I have seen a fox turn in a dry ditch and,facing his foes, die fighting. In any case the endis swift, and for the fox it is the price he pays for allthose things—hunting his prey, love, and seclusion—he likes best. But never at any moment of the chasecan he feel what a man would feel. The mind of theanimal cannot form the image to clothe his misery.His feelings are by so much less painful, as they are
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THE MIND OF THE FOX 63 simpler, than ours would be. A man thinks of whathe is leaving ; a fox cannot do this. The long-drawn-out end is only the fate of one here and there : moreoften the chase is swift, short, and decisive, and thefox is spared what is the most painful thing to him—the failure of his powers. A fox whose whole mindis concentrated on living, whose whole joy is in thesuccessful carrying-out of the life to which he wasborn, finds his pain in the sense of failure and weak-ness. But against the pain and failure of the defeatedfox, may we not set without fancifulness the morefrequent case when the victory remains with him,when he has outpaced, outwitted, and baffled hisfoes, and can rejoice in his strength and swiftness ? Ithink the many recorded instances where a fox hasbeen known, in the very heat of being hunted, to turnaside to kill a weaker bird or animal, show at leastthat his own character of the hunter is more presentto his mind than that of the hunted. In this, a

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