Kelly S. O'Dell, age 10, of Oak Hill, West Virginia, for his question:

What are foxgloves and fox fires?

The European fox is a small wild dog with a thick orange brown coat, a handsome bushy tail and a very high I.q. As to character, he is known as an artful dodger, with a sackful of cunning trickery.  Naturally, with these qualities he captured human imagination and his name eras borrowed for all sorts of foxy traits. Foxgloves are plants that bear rows of freckled flowers on tall spires. Each flower is the right shape for a fox's glove, though too small to fit a fully grown fox.

Fox fire is an eerie patch of light that glows in the forest, especially at night. Now you see it, now you don't. In olden times, people thought there was some foxy trickery about it  and naturally they named it fox fire. Actually the luminous glow is caused by certain bacteria. It can be seen in the darkness. But its pale glow is lost in the bright light of day, which is why it seems to disappear.