EVERLASTING QUESTION 113 



your coverts treated like the sanctuary on 

 a deer forest is not a fair tax on your 

 good-will, and masters of hounds should 

 never ask or expect more foxes to be 

 preserved than they are prepared to make 

 use of on the ground where they live. 



Keepers, either with or without the 

 authority of their employers, will often 

 take to killing their foxes because the 

 hounds never come or never kill when 

 they do ; and such measures of self- 

 defence seem natural enough, for the 

 foxes while doing real harm to their 

 game, seem to be doing little or no 

 good to anyone else. 



On one estate of no great size in a 

 hunting country, the writer is well aware 

 — although the owner is not — that the 

 keeper kills from thirty to fifty foxes 

 every year, and yet the hounds have 

 rarely had a blank day in these coverts. 

 Without some such measures, this keeper 

 would find it difficult to keep his pheasants 

 or nideed his situation, for some sport he 

 must show for the gun, or else be written 



8 



