EVERLASTING QUESTION 121 



game-coverts as is consistent with the 

 feelings of neighbouring rearers of pheas- 

 ants. A sufficiency of rabbits in these 

 coverts will keep the cubs occupied when 

 they come to hunt for themselves, and 

 may save the rearing-field from their un- 

 welcome attentions. 



With regard to influencing the family 

 arrangements of the litter, artificial earths 

 are not as a rule necessary, except only on 

 a clay soil, where foxes have perforce to 

 live above ground under natural conditions 

 and game suffers accordingly. 



With the arrival of the nesting season, 

 the presence of the fox begins to make 

 itself most sensibly felt, and many and 

 diverse are the devices and stratagems 

 employed by keepers to save their charges 

 from destruction. Some wire in the vixen 

 and her litter from the end of March to 

 the close of June, feeding by hand all the 

 time. One keeper at least has improved 

 on this idea by having in addition one big 

 wired-in enclosure in the centre of his 

 main covert, banked up on the outside, so 



