CH.VIII.] FOXES V. GAME. 251 



nate leveret is utterly defenceless, and must fall 

 a victim to the first fox that happens to pass to 

 leeward of it. Old hares too, though better able 

 to take care of themselves, must often fall victims 

 to their cunning foe, when old rabbits would be out 

 of his reach. The lives of young pheasants and 

 partridges would, qua foxes, probably be insura- 

 ble at about equal rates until the former are able 

 to go to bough ; but, after that, pheasants are 

 comparatively exempt from danger, while a covey 

 of partridges clustered all together at night must 

 be as easy and tempting a prey as a fleet of gold- 

 laden galleons without a convoy would have been 

 to a man-of-war in the olden time. I know an 

 estate in a part of the country where there were 

 formerly no foxes, on which, before their intro- 

 duction, sixty or eighty hares were not unfre- 

 quently killed in a day's shooting. Since then, 

 however (the coverts on the estate in question 

 affording an excellent harbour for foxes), the 

 number of hares on it has been gradually de- 

 creasing, and now it is almost rare in a day's 

 shooting to kill a tenth part of the former num- 

 ber. 



Besides the game actually taken by foxes as 

 food, they indulge, I regret to say, in the very 



