licks her chops and watches. The work of a vixen among sitting birds differs from that of the dog fox. While she always carries her booty to her cubs, he kills in wanton waste, leaving the birds' bodies, often headless, near their nests. Some or all of the eggs may be eaten, or they may be left untouched, still as neatly arranged in the nest as the mother bird left them when she stole off to feed and take a bath in dust. The keeper may recognise the excuse of the mother fox's necessity, but for the wanton slaughter by her idle mate he sees no reason, and finds no forgiveness. Only those who have seen the remains of game scattered round the earth of a litter of cubs--the cubs of an experienced mother--can realise what it costs in game to entertain foxes. Where rabbits are plentiful, pheasants and partridges suffer less from foxes than where rabbits are scarce, and the keeper may help a vixen to cater for her cubs by shooting and snaring rabbits in her favour. He leaves their bodies, but scattered at a fair distance from the earth, so that the vixen must spend some time in fetching and carrying, and has the less time for making a mixed bag of her own selection. * * * * * The Cubs' Playground Unseeing eyes pass blindly over the home of a litter of cubs; but the keeper's never overpass the place. Long furrows through the dog's-mercury and grasses tell their tale. Primroses are torn and crushed, the great leaves of the burdock are bruised and broken, the moss is rubbed from the underwood stumps and from the boles of trees where the cubs have been gambolling and rubbing their coats, the excavated soil near the earth is smooth from the pattering of their feet, beaten hard and polished--and in all directions there are scattered wings, feathers and bones. If the keeper calls, and sees signs of recent rollicking play and fresh-killed food, and fresh-drawn soil where the cubs amuse themselves at earth-making and enlarging the burrows of rabbits, he knows the family to be in residence. Should the soil near the entrance to the earth have a green look, he knows the family has gone away. * * * * * A Fox's Feat Who would believe that a full-grown fox could pass through the mesh of ordinary sheep-netting?--four-inch mesh, if memory serves. We know of one case where a vixen was actually seen to accomplish this wonderful feat. With her cubs, she had been dug out from her earth, carried to a distant part of the country, and imprisoned. The four-inch mesh must have been a tight fit for her body; but perhaps she had worried and fretted at her imprisonment, until she had worn herself to a shadow. Her cubs, which were unweaned, may have helped to weaken her strength, and reduce her waist until it could squeeze through the netting.