are, by September, yellow-brown, and it is not until the following spring that
they assume the full colour of the adults.
Like many other species of the Carnivora the Fox possesses a somewhat large
scent gland situated beneath the tail, which secrets a foul-smelling sebaceous
matter. The strong odour imparted by this gland is communicated to both the
excreta and the urine, and renders all places inhabited by the animal offensive.
When angry or frightened,, the Fox can create a smell which some dogs do no
care to pass, although it is not nearly so overpowering as that made by many of
the weasels or the skunk.1 To some this mephitic smell is not unpleasant;
Linnaeus speaks of it as an ‘ ambrosial odour,’ while Schreber, though considering
it to be disagreeable, calls it a ‘ violaceous scent.’
The average weight of a dog Fox is from fifteen to twenty pounds, that of
a Vixen from ten to fifteen pounds, though it is common to find dog Foxes inhabiting
mountainous country, more especially the Highlands of Scotland, considerably
heavier. The largest dog Fox I have seen was shot by Capt. Ormonde
at Balnespick, Inverness-shire, at a grouse drive at which I was present, in
November 1891. I weighed it the same evening and it turned the scale at
twenty-four pounds. Foxes of twenty-two and twenty-three pounds are not very
rare. Writing on this subject in the ‘ Field ’ (Feb. 1, 1902) R. B. L. says
that an ‘ old Welsh hunter’ chronicled one killed by terriers, near Beddgelert,
which weighed twenty-nine pounds; it was sent to be ‘ set up ’ by Shaw, the
well-known taxidermist of Shrewsbury. The most interesting items, however,
come from Cumberland and Westmorland. In 1899 a terrier called ‘ Corby,’
belonging to Lord Decies, which ran with the Ullswater hounds, went to ground
in some rocks near the lake. When dug out it was found to have killed three
huge dog Foxes, which weighed altogether sixty-two pounds. Possibly they
were more or less suffocated in the narrow part of the earth to which the game
little dog had driven them. Joe Bowman, so long and favourably known in
connection with the same hounds, and who, as an authority on these ‘ mountain *
Foxes, stands almost alone, wrote that a majority of the Foxes he found when
hunting on Crossfell weighed from nineteen to twenty pounds in weight; one
which his hounds killed after a two and a half hours’ run weighed eighteen
pounds; no doubt it had lost enormously in weight during the chase. The
1 In a dairy on my brother’s ranch in Wyoming, I noticed that the milk tasted strongly of skunk, and on inquiry found
that a skunk had inadvertently been killed there by a dog eighteen months previously. The skunk knows the power of its
weapons so well that it will hardly get out of the way o f a rider on horseback.