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Allowance must be made for the keeper's standard prejudice against foxes. Depredations are seldom perhaps quite so wholesale as is alleged. But this man spoke good natural history ; and the point he made has not been much noted or investigated. Individual animals of many sorts vary greatly in their feeding habits, have different tastes. It is quite sufficiently proved that individual rooks, to give one instance, acquire very much the same tastes as carrion crows. They come to enjoy eggs and take up the profession of egg-sucking. All animals change their natural feeding habits if they are too numerous. The struggle is harder ; and they overcome the greater difficulty by widening their range. This is most noticeable, perhaps, among rooks, but it is true of other birds and many mammals. It is true of foxes. If they are very numerous a greater proportion rob hen-roosts and seek out the clutches of ground-nesting birds. And an animal that has once acquired the habit does not lose it, especially if he is a dog-fox. No other animal is quite so incurable an individualist.
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