Brock to hide the bunnies. Emphatic frames in the black and white illustrations give the impression of woodcuts. Potter believed a black frame pulled a picture together and sent back the distance. Potter made the kitchen dim to eliminate some detail of the battle between Tod and Brock. Scholar Ruth K. MacDonald argues that the black and white illustrations emphasize the mythic, permanent quality of the tale with heavy black lines that display little of the delicacy characteristic of Potter's work. She suggests these pictures are more like woodcuts in their heaviness than drawings, and points out they were not "tossed off" to satisfy fans and her publisher, but deliberately planned to give an antique, primitive quality to the story in the manner of Caxton's woodcuts for his edition of Aesop's Fables. She notes that the colour illustrations are not vignetted nor surrounded with heavy black lines but rather with a white border that prevents the pastels from fading into the background. The lightness of the pastels and the overall green tones of the colour illustrations contrast with the heavy lines of the black and white pictures and the blocks of print, and this contrast produces a sense of fading because of antiquity yet suggest permanence, "as the greenness of nature is permanent and recurring in the cycle of seasons." Reception Many of Potter's tales appealed to girls, but Mr. Tod had a strong following among boys, due perhaps to the lengthy fight at the end of the book accompanied by "dreadful bad language". Six-year-old Harold Botcherby wrote to Potter asking if the fight between Tod and Brock was still raging. Potter replied; describing the end of the battle and the injuries to the combatants:I am sorry to tell you they are still quarreling. Mr. Tod has been living in the willow till he was flooded out; at present he is in the stick house with a bad cold in his head. As for the end of the fight – Mr. Tod had nearly half his hair pulled out of his brush [tail] and five bad bites, especially one ear, which is scrumpled up (like you sometimes see nasty old Tom Cat's ears). the only misfortune to Tommy Brock – he had his jacket torn and lost one of his boots. So for a long time he went about with one of his feet bundled up in dirty rags, like