Natural History

From The Dog in Health and Disease (1859). Stonehenge uses some correspondence between a Mr. Tomlin, who makes the claim about this hybrid. The image is supposedly of a creature that is 3/4 dog and one quarter fox that was derived from the original supposed F1 hybrid that wound up in the hands of Mr. Hewer of Reading.

Mr. Tomlin write of the supposed F1 crosses in an 1855 issue of  a publication called Bell’s Life:

I venture to forward you one respecting the fox and dog cross, and, although somewhat out of season, it may, perhaps, prove interesting to the sportsman and the naturalist. In 1853 various accounts appeared in ‘Bell’s Life in London’ of the fox and dog cross, the fact being established by a gentleman of Kent, who then possessed a vulpo-canine bitch which had produce by a dog (vide ‘ Bell’s Life,’ Dec. 1853 and Feb. 1854). This bitch (half fox, half dog), now in my possession, had produce in the month of February last by a terrier dog. The produce are two dog-whelps and three bitches, some of which were (to ease the dam) suckled by a cur bitch. Two of the litter prove in nature shy as a fox; three of them dog-like in appearance, colour, and perfectly quiet, and follow well at heel. Still, they have the real fox muzzle and ‘fox action,’ about which (to those who have well studied it in the hunting-field) there exists but little mistake. Many there are who doubt the existence of any such animal as that between fox and dog. I am, however, in perfect condition to prove (by the living articles themselves) that the fox is merely a separate species of the genus dog, and intercopulates With the bitch, producing not a hybrid or mule animal, but one which will propagate its species to the very end of the chapter (pg. 166).

Mr. Tomblin describes the supposed hybrid bitch giving birth to a litter with a terrier:

In 1855 you were good enough to describe in ‘Bell’s Life’ some history of a vulpo-canine bitch in my possession at Peterborough which had bred whelps, and as you are at this period of the year ‘for the fox and nothing but the fox,’ perhaps you can spare a niche in your ‘fancy columns’ for a subject that may not be considered out of season. The vulpo-canine vixen is now, like all the fox genus, in full coat, and a beautiful-looking animal, higher on the leg than our common foxes, with more frame and size, and looks like going a slapping pace, and carries that unmistakable odour which accompanies ‘the beast of stinking flight.’ She bred a litter of whelps in the spring of the years 1855 and 1856 (got by a * lion-tawny-‘ coloured terrier dog), and goes ‘on heat’ only at one regular period. Her produce are endued more or less with the natural shyness and timidity of the vulpine species, and which it appears somewhat difficult to remove. The formation of their heads is faultless—long, and punishing—in fact, the appearance of these animals resembles terrier dogs, with the perfect head and countenance, back, body, and feet of the fox. The vulpo-canine bitch is now suckling four whelps (got by a good white terrier dog), and as their colours are likewise good — white ‘with black and pied ear-patches ‘ — it is likely to prove a better cross of its sort than the two former litters of whelps which the bitch reared, they being all of foxy, wild, dark-looking colours; and, as the terrier dog which got them was somewhat wicked and crafty in nature, I am now inclined to think that, ‘as like begets like,’ he was not altogether a suitable partner for the vulpo-canine bitch—an animal but one remove from the ‘veritable fox itself,’ as wild, too, as the wildest fox which ever broke away in a state of nature from any ‘ evergreen gorse covert,’ with a pack of hounds in pursuit, all eager for the fray (pg. 167).

Of course, this whole story is one giant flight of fancy. Red foxes can no more cross with dogs than they can with cats. There are plenty of domestic dogs that look like foxes. Virtually all of the smaller spitzes could be mistaken for a fox and could have easily “lined” a terrier.

But such an animal could be claimed to be part fox as a time-tested way of getting rid of a mongrel puppy. Many supposed “wolfdog” are just husky crosses that some unscrupulous person has claimed to be part wolf in order to get rid of them more quickly.

Of course, now that one of these supposed dog-fox hybrids has whelped a litter, Stonehenge is willing to thunder about how dogs and foxes are so similar. It is in this sort of intellectual milieu that Darwin postulated that some dogs were derived from foxes– as well as wolves and jackals.