[Three Hundred Animals Contents]
IS produced in most countries, and varies much in size and colour. In Muscovy some are white, some red, and others black. His abode is generally on the skirt of a wood, in a hole which some other animal has either voluntarily left or been driven from. Nature, who endowed him with sagacity, craft, and cunning, has not, however, allotted him a long life; being classed by her among the dog kind, the duration of his existence does not exceed twelve or fifteen years. His bite is tenacious and dangerous, as the severest blows cannot make him quit his hold; his eye is most significant, and expressive of every passion, as love, fear, hatred, &c. The Fox is the greatest enemy to the poultry-yard, which he depopulates often in the course of one night. But when his choice food, the chicken flesh, is not accessible, then he devours animal food of all kinds, even serpents, lizards, frogs, toads; and if his habitation is near the water, he even contents himself with shell-fish. In France and Italy he does a great deal of damage in vineyards, being very fond of grapes, and spoiling many for the choice of one bunch: his stratagems are well known, and need not to be recorded here.