112 THE DIARY OF A HUNTSMAN 



one. They have been known to carry away a 

 whole Utter two or three miles in one night, when 

 the cubs were about ten days old, about which 

 age they begin to see. 



The food of foxes, as is well known, varies in 

 different countries, except in rabbits, which they 

 always will get if they can, as they prefer them to 

 any other description of food ; and the proof of it 

 is that a bet of a hundred to one can be had 

 that every billet of a fox has rabbits' fur in it. 

 That they do prefer rabbits is easily proved to be 

 the case, by confining in some place a fox, and 

 with him a rabbit and every other sort of food, 

 live or dead, that can be thought of, and he will 

 take the rabbit first to a certainty. This is not 

 a great reason, but the great reason why keepers 

 dislike foxes ; for every fox destroys rabbits in 

 one year sufficient to have supplied the keeper with 

 gin ; consequently, when he sees a fox, he loses 

 his spirits as well as his temper. The fox finds the 

 rabbits in the stops when very young, and when 

 they are not to be had he lives upon the old ones, 

 both of which are often the keeper's perquisites. 

 This is so well known, that many gentlemen who 

 wish well to hunting will not allow their keepers 

 to sell the rabbits. In the New Forest and else- 

 where foxes live principally on beetles, the wings 

 of which are seen in their billets ; if near the sea 



