the vixen-cubs were slightly quicker to learn, they were more
excitable, and consequently did not benefit fully by each lesson. Vulp
soon began to hunt for his own sport and profit. In the meadow above the
wood he would sit motionless, his eyes fixed on the ground, till the
voles came from their burrows to play beneath the grass-bents; then,
with a quick rush, he would secure a victim directly its presence was
betrayed by a waving stalk. With the same patience he would watch near a
rabbit warren, till one of the inhabitants, hopping out to the mound
before her door, gave him the sure chance of a kill. But in the
wheat-fields on the slope his methods were altogether different. To
capture partridges required unusual cunning and skill, and such
importance did the vixen attach to this branch of her field-craft, that,
before initiating her youngsters into the sport of hunting these birds
at night, she instructed them diligently in the methods of following by
scent, training them how to pursue the winding trail left by the larks
that fed at evening near their sleeping places, or by the corncrakes
that wandered babbling through the green wheat. Vulp's first attempt to
capture a partridge chick resulted in failure. The vixen-cubs "fouled"
the line he had patiently picked out in the ditch around the cornfield,
and, "casting" haphazard through the herbage, alarmed the sleeping
birds, and sent them away to a secure hiding place in the clover. But
his second attempt was crowned with success, and he proudly carried his
prey into a sequestered nook amid the gorse, where he enjoyed a quiet
meal.

The cub was fully six months old before he knew the precise difference
between stale and fresh scent, or between the scent of one creature and
that of another, and how to hunt accordingly; and several years, with
many dangers and hair-breadth escapes, were destined to pass before he
became expert in avoiding or baffling the numerous enemies--chiefly
dogs, and men, and traps--that threatened his life. And yet, during the
first few months of his existence, he gained sufficient knowledge for
the needs of the moment; and when August drew on towards the close of
the summer, and he was three parts grown, he had so extended his nightly
rambles that the "lay of the land" was familiar for miles around the
covert. His outdoor existence--for now he was wont to sleep in a lair
among the gorse and the bracken, instead of in the stuffy "earth"--gave
him st