THE FOX IN SUMMER 151 



no scent, and hounds could run him but slowly. Five 

 or six minutes later, over the same ground, foiled 

 as it was before the second fox crossed it, they ran 

 another fox like wildfire, and both were dog foxes, 

 I am sure. Since then I have noted much the same 

 thing happen more than once, and have several 

 times seen hounds change from a fox they had been 

 running hard to one that they could scarcely hunt, 

 though the latter was a very short distance in front 

 of them. On every one of these occasions I have 

 heard men express astonishment at the sudden 

 change of scent, but cannot recollect anybody 

 suggesting that this was due to the change of foxes, 

 as I firmly believe it was. 



I mentioned that both the foxes I saw hunted by 

 the Curraghmore hounds were dog foxes ; because it 

 is a well-established fact that a heavy vixen, or one 

 that is nursing her cubs, does not, as a rule, give 

 out as strong a scent as a dog fox. This must have 

 been noticed at the end of a season by all hunting 

 men who take interest in the sport and to whom 

 the glory of the gallop is not the sole aim and object 

 of hunting. But here, again, there is no hard-and- 

 fast rule, and occasionally hounds will race into such 

 a vixen in a few screeching minutes, though they 

 may seem reluctant to break her up when killed. 

 To the best of my knowledge, I have seen a bagman 

 hunted but twice in my life, and I would that my 

 score in this game had been a duck's egg. In both 

 instances hounds ran in a puzzled, purposeless sort 

 of manner; exactly, in fact, in the style in which 

 the celebrated Mr. Facey Romford's hounds hunted 



