16 THE LIFE OF A FOX.

hundreds of others, led on by hunger, have fallen
into the snare, losing either leg or toes. Baits
for catching stoats and weasels, set upon a stick
some fourteen inches above the ground, we car-
ried away without mischief from the trap below °*.
At about six months old we were three parts
grown, I and my brothers being something
larger than our sisters, whose heads were thinner
and more pointed. The white tip of the brush
was not, let me remark, peculiar to either sex
of us. Iand one of my brothers, and also one
of my sisters, had it, whilst the other sister and
the. other brother were altogether without it,
not having a single white hair. That brother
has been known to profit by the exemption,
when on being viewed in the spring of the year
the hounds have been stopped with the remark,
It ’s a vixen; there is no white on her brush.”
I have since observed that old male foxes are
of a much lighter colour on the back than are

the old female ones, which are commonly of a

° See sketch, “ Extracts from the Diary of a Huntsman,” p. 211.