I have never been able to see clearly why the mother fox generally selects a burrow or hole in the open field in which to have her young, except it be, as some hunters maintain, for better security.  The young foxes are wont to come out on a warm day, and play like puppies in front of the den.  The view being unobstructed on all sides by trees or bushes, in the cover of which danger might approach, they are less liable to surprise and capture.  On the slightest sound they disappear in the hole.  Those who have watched the gambols of young foxes speak of them as very amusing, even more arch and playful than those of kittens, while a spirit profoundly wise and cunning seems to look out of their young eyes.  The parent fox can never be caught in the den with them, but is hovering near the woods, which are always at hand, and by her warning cry or bark tells them when to be on their guard.  She usually has at least three, dens, at no great distance apart, and moves stealthily in the night with her charge from one to the other, so as to mislead her enemies.  Many a party of boys, and of men, too, discovering the whereabouts of a litter, have gone with shovels and picks, and, after digging away vigorously for several hours, have found only an empty hole for their pains.  The old fox, finding her secret had been found out, had waited for darkness, in the cover of which to transfer her household to new quarters; or else some old fox-hunter, jealous of the preservation of his game, and getting word of the intended destruction of the litter, had gone at dusk the night before, and made some disturbance about the den, perhaps flashed some powder in its mouth,—­a hint which the shrewd animal knew how to interpret.

The more scientific aspects of the question may not be without interest to some of my readers.  The fox belongs to the great order of flesh-eating animals called Carnivora, and of the family called Canidae, or dogs.  The wolf is a kind of wild dog, and the fox is a kind of wolf.  Foxes, unlike wolves, however, never go in packs or companies, but hunt singly.  The fox has a kind of bark which suggests the dog, as have all the members of this family.  The kinship is further shown by the fact that during certain periods, for the most part in the summer, the dog cannot be made to attack or even to pursue the female fox, but will run from her in the most shamefaced manner, which he will not do in the case of any other animal except a wolf.  Many of the ways and manners of the fox, when tamed, are also like the dog’s.  I once saw a young red fox exposed for sale in the market in Washington.  A colored man had him, and said he had caught him out in Virginia.  He led him by a small chain, as he would a puppy, and the innocent young rascal would lie on his side and bask and sleep in the sunshine, amid all the noise and chaffering around him, precisely like a dog.  He was about the size of a full-grown cat, and there was a bewitching beauty about him that I could hardly resist.  On another occasion, I saw a gray fox, about two thirds grown, playing with a dog of about the same size, and by nothing in the manners of either could you tell which was the dog and which the fox.