The Natural History of Selborne

Foxes begin now to be very rank, & to smell so high that as one rides along of a morning it is easy to distinguish where they have been the night before.  At this season the intercourse between the sexes commences; & the females intimate their wants to the males by three or four little sharp yelpings or barkings frequently repeated.  This anecdote I learned by living formerly at an house opposite to a neighbour that kept a tame bitch-fox, which every spring about candlemass began her amorous serenade as soon as it grew dark, & continued it nightly thro’ ye months of Feb. & March.