FOXES FOXHOUNDS & FOX-HUNTING 



There eventually comes a time when the cubs 

 follow their mother on her hunting expeditions. 

 The latter are gradually extended until the cubs 

 are familiar with a considerable area of ground. 

 Thus, hunting in concert, the youngsters perfect 

 themselves in all the tactics that they began in 

 play, and which in the future they have to depend 

 on to enable them to wrest a living from a not 

 always hospitable world. These family ex- 

 peditions are regularly indulged in, until some fine 

 morning in late August or September the hounds 

 pay a visit to the covert. The vixen, wise to all 

 that is going on, quietly slips away, and in the 

 next hour or so the cubs go through a nightmare 

 of strange and terrifying experiences. One or 

 two of them, generally the least enterprising 

 members of the family, pay the extreme penalty, 

 while the rest, amongst whom is pretty sure to be 

 the precocious one, manage to save themselves 

 somehow. After all the hullabaloo is over, and 

 peace reigns once more, the remaining members 

 of the litter become split up, and begin to go " on 

 their own." 



This is no doubt the most trying period of a 

 cub's life, for though he is able to hunt and 

 secure sufficient food his knowledge of the world 

 is as yet quite in its infancy. He is equipped 

 with a keen nose, a quick ear, and average eye- 

 sight, but he is as yet lacking in experience. His 

 nose is really his chief asset, for with him it takes 

 the place that speech and reading do with human 

 beings. All the information the growing cub 

 acquires is obtained through his nose. As we 

 learn to interpret what we see with our eyes, so 

 does the fox with the various scents that reach 

 his nostrils. He learns the individual scents of 

 the gamebirds, the hares, rabbits, and other 



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