66 THE MASTER OF GAME 



overset him, his last remedy, if he is in an open 

 country, will be that he vishiteth gladly (the act 

 of voiding excrements) so that the greyhounds 

 should leave him for the stink of the dirt, and 

 also for the fear that he hath. 



A little greyhound is very hardy when (if) he 

 takes a fox by himself, for men have seen great 

 greyhounds which might well take a hart and a 

 wild boar and a wolf and would let the fox go. 

 And when the vixen is assaute, and goeth in her 

 love to seek the dog fox she crieth with a hoarse 

 voice as a mad hound doth, and also when she 

 calleth her whelps when she misses any of them, 

 she calleth in the same way. The fox does not 

 complain (cry) when men slay him, but he defend- 

 eth himself with all his power while he is alive. 

 He liveth on all vermin and all carrion and on 

 foul worms. His best meat that he most loveth 

 are hens, capons, duck and young geese and other 

 wild fowls when he can get them, also butterflies 

 and grasshoppers, milk and butter. They do 

 great harm in warrens of coneys and of hares which 



could be encompassed were considered legitimate, his exter- 

 mination being the chief object in hunting him, and not the 

 sport. Even as late as the seventeenth century we find that 

 such treatment was considered justifiable towards a fox, for, 

 as Macaulay tells us, Oliver St. John told the Long Parliament 

 that Strafford was to be regarded, not as a stag or a hare, to 

 whom some law was to be given, but as a fox, who was to be 

 snared by any means, and knocked on the head without pity 

 (vol. i. p. 149). 



