16 OUTDOOR LIFE IN ENGLAND 



I am inclined to the belief that where our foxes 

 have been crossed with foreign blood they are 

 less ruddy in colour. 



There are few handsomer animals than a well- 

 conditioned English dog-fox, surely, seen at his 

 very best, when, roused from his late slumbers 

 by the approach of the hounds, he jumps up out 

 of the fern with a whisk of his brush, dashes 

 across the woodland ride in the bright sunlight 

 of a February morning, and, stealing away from 

 the covert, makes his point across the green 

 pastures of the shire for his home far away in 

 the beech-woods in the distant hills. 



But how sadly changed his appearance an hour 

 later, as, with lolling tongue and heaving sides, 

 he struggles along under the hedgerow ! No 

 wretched welsher ever looked more utterly dis- 

 reputable and miserable. Despite the excitement 

 and pleasure of, it may be, the best and quickest 

 thing of the season, who cannot find it in his 

 heart to wish to save the life of the wretched 

 victim for whose blood the hounds, even now trail- 

 ing over the last fence, are so furiously thirsting ? 

 Game to the last, he tries to double back on the 

 far side of the hedge. Alas ! it is too late. A 

 hound has viewed him, turns him into the field, 

 and all is over. To quote Whyte-Melville's well- 

 known lines : 



' 'Twas a stout hill fox when they found him ; 

 Now 'tis a hundred tatters of brown.' 



