“Call me Cock-tail, half-bred, ill-bred, mongrel cur; but know that I claim kindred with your noble selves.” _All._ “Audacious dog-face!” “Honour ye the Cock-tail! Cock-tail had a grandfather!” _All._ “Impossible! Never!” “Listen, then, to facts; facts are stubborn things, and if my story do not please, it may at least surprise you.” COCK-TAIL’S STORY It is known, I believe, that half-bred animals do not reproduce their kind, and if it were otherwise innumerable would be such kinds. My mother’s father was a fox. Her mother was a well-bred terrier in colour much like your own. She belonged to a man who lived near Harborough, in Leicestershire, and was valuable to him for her extraordinary talent in killing rats and mice, as well as for the use which he occasionally made of her in poaching at night. Wishing to procure a mixed breed between her and a fox, he took her one night, at a particular period of the spring, to a certain spot in a wood which he knew to be much frequented by foxes, and having fastened her against a tree, left her there till morning. On the following night he removed her to a short distance from the spot where she was left the night before. After doing the same for several nights he took her home, and in nine weeks after that she produced four young ones, all of which are now living, and much like a fox. My father was a brown terrier, and my mother may be seen at any time, as she is fastened up by a chain in the inn-yard at Market Harborough. The hair on her back and sides is thick, and stands nearly upright like that of a fox. The hairs upon the upper side of the tail are not so long and full as those of a fox, but the under part and the sides are the same; the tips of them are black. Her legs and feet are black, and the latter are round like yours, with a little tan-colour behind the knee-joint. Her ears are pointed, and when she is at rest laid back, but when she is roused pricked up like your own. All these properties you may behold in me, but not exactly in an equal degree. The most remarkable difference between ourselves and you is this, that neither my mother nor myself are endued with the strong odour peculiar to the fox. My mother has never been let loose by the consent of her keepers, even in the inn-yard; but having once got loose by accident, when about two years old, she ran away a long distance, and being followed into a yard was there secured again. It was observed when running that she carried her tail level as I do, like a fox; sometimes it was crooked, but never upright. It was not so much curled as mine is.