The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-23

make the clueking sound which l have
 mentioned before. as though calling his puppies to the feast. Then. finding mo response. he would take away the meat, dig a hole and bury it. And he never tried to take away piece of meat when the vixen had secured, as he often had done before the puppies
 arrived. but when the vixen tried to
 take away any of his food. he tried to prevent her. seemingly that he might
 offer it to the youngsters in the den.
 Alter he had buried it often saw the
 vixen dig it up and eat it.
 The only food which .'The Sprite' re- served for himself was the candy which
 We gave him now and then. The temp tation to eat a caramel it seemed be- yond his power to resist, and he would sit with closed eyes and calmly chew away until the last atom was gone. land then lick his lips and wag his tail
 sor another.
 Every now and then. if she saw any one watching her, the vixen would take one of the babies in her mouth, bring lit out of the den and hunt for some safe place to put it. Not finding one, she would often deposit the infant on the ground, and then bring the others Iout, one by one. Here they would in- stinctively form as close a bunch as passible. lying one across the back of another. like a little heap of grain
 sacks. One day I saw The Sprite, !" for the first time, take up piece of meat to eat it. He chewed it, and was about to swallow it. when he caught sight of a pup lying on the ground near him. Up came the meat in an instant, land, clucEing significantly, he put down the food beside the youngster,
 but the vixen, who seemed to have
 more sense if less generosity, quickly gobbled it up.
 One afternoon, when we were all
 away, some strangers came into the garden, and stood by the side of the fox-cage until the vixen was in fren- zy of anxiety. The next day she had a | fit, and on the following day she, had nearly thirty fits and I was afraid she would die before we could get veteri- nary surgeon whom I telephoned for at once. She seemed to waste away to a skeleton in the course of a few hours. her eyes were glazed. and, as she no longer recognized her pups, took them away The doctor gave little hope for her recovery, but we carried
 out his orders to the letter, and. save that she is still quite nervous, she has fully recovered from the attack. But we dared not give her the pups again, and they are now being brought up by hand.
 During the vixen's illness, and before we took the pups away it was most Interesting to watch the actions of 'sThe Sprite." He seemed to realize lthat something was wrong, and never
 mistook the strange actions of his mate flor playfulness, though both foxes were in the habit of rolling on the
 ground when they played together.
 He was very restless. and walked about the cage, examining the pups and lick ing them from time to time. He did not attempt to carry them, but when one Of them would crawl into some
 hole or corner beneath or behind the
 den, he would rake it out with his paws. He also offered them food and afterwards buried 1t as usual.
 When the young foxes were thirteen | days oldtheir teeth began to come through the gums and three days later they could bite finger hard enough to make it uncomfortable. Even earlier than this. if they were caught up sud- denly, they would give little ''yap" and snap at the offending hand. When
 they were fifteen days old, the eye of lone young fox began to show signs of opening, but it was not until they were nineteen days old that all of them had their sight.
 Before they were taken from their
 mother they hardly ever whined, but aftrwards they cried nearly all the time they were awake. They were fed with a medicine dropper at first, and they took to 1t readily enough. They drank cows milk or matted milk with equal relish, but the former seemed to sustain them the better. Every day we offered them meat, to find out how ] soon they would take an interest in it. I On the twenty first day they were Of fered bit of raw beef, and although l they took no special notice of it at the moment one of them presently found l it for himself and began sucking it.,
 meanwhile holding it down with his
 paws. When we attempted to take it
 away the little Imp growled and tried
 his best to hold on to it.
 At first their only cry was a wailing
 whine, but after a few days 1t became
 vibratory, sometimes sounding like the
 usual note of a screech owl, and on the
 seventeenth day first heard an uncer-
 tain swow-wow-wow" at the end of the whine.
 l They are now. at three weeks old,
 beginning to take real interest in life.
 They toddle all about the floor, pausing, when they meet one another, to have a
 miniature ough-and-tunlbe fight,
 growing all the while as if they really
 mean it. In short, they take very 1