s, and patricks, and wee
birds, and ither animal eatables, to kill the fox that devoors them, and
keeps them in perpetual het water?

_North._ But the fox, James?

_Shepherd._ Deevil take baith you and the fox; I said that we would come
to the fox by and by. Weel, then, wha kens that the fox isna away
snorin' happy afore the houn's? I hae nae doubt he is, for a fox is no
sae complete a coward as to think huntin' cruel; and his haill nature
is then on the alert, which in itsel' is happiness. Huntin' him fa'in
into languor and ennui, and growin' ower fat on how-towdies (_barn-door
fowls_). He's no killed every time he's hunted.

_North._ Why, James, you might write for the "Annals of Sporting."

_Shepherd._ So I do sometimes--and mair o' ye than me, I jalouse; but I
was gaun to ask ye if ye could imagine the delicht o' a fox gettin' into
an undiggable earth, just when the leadin' houn' was at his
hainches?--ae sic moment is aneuch to repay half an hour's draggle
through the dirt; and he can lick himsel' clean at his leisure, far ben
in the cranny o' the rock, and come out a' tosh and tidy by the first
dawn o' licht, to snuff the mornin' air, and visit the distant
farm-house before Partlet has left her perch, or Count Crow lifted his
head from beneath his oxter on his shed-seraglio.

_North._ Was ye ever in at a death? Is not that cruel?

_Shepherd._ Do you mean in at the death o' ae fox, or the death o' a
hundred thousand men and sixty thousand horses?--the takin' o' a Brush,
or a Borodino?

_North._ My dear James, thank ye for your argument. As one Chalmers is
worth a thousand Martins, so is one Hogg worth a thousand Chalmerses.

_Shepherd._ Ane may weel lose patience, to think o' fules being sorry
for the death o' a fox. When the jowlers tear him to pieces, he shows
fecht, and gangs aff in a snarl. Hoo could he dee mair easier?--and for
a' the gude he has ever dune, or was likely to do, he surely had leeved
lang eneuch.

ARCTIC FOX (_Vulpes lagopus_).

This inoffensive and pretty little creature is found in all parts of the
Arctic lands. Its fur is peculiarly fine and thick; and as in winter
this is closer and more mixed with wool than it is in summer, the
intense cold of these regions is easily resisted. When sleeping rolled
up into a ball, with the black muzzle buried in the long hairs of the
tail, there is not a portion of the body but what is protected from the
cold, the shaggy hairs of the brush actin