ETIQUETTE 23 



on an estate where foxes were not allowed to 

 exist, and been told from childhood that " where 

 there were foxes there could be no game," he 

 has never had the opportunity of studying the 

 habits of the animal, and has believed all he 

 has been told. What would such a man think 

 of five litters of cubs on one estate — at Kirby 

 Hall — and yet there were plenty of pheasants 

 and partridges, while hares were so numerous 

 that my father used to restrict us as boys to 

 twenty-five hares a day when partridge-shooting, 

 when we used often to pick out only the big 

 ones to shoot, to make a fine display on our 

 return in the evening ! And yet my father did 

 not hunt himself ! ! And what would he think 

 of the litters reared in Suffolk itself on several 

 estates, such as at Westacre, where three times 

 over four hundred brace of partridges have been 

 killed in a day in October within the last 

 few years, while there have never ])een less than 

 five litters of cubs, and generally more ; and 

 on another estate, a few miles off excellent bags 

 of partridges are also made, and yet there are 

 lots of foxes ? Can the said keeper show the 

 same results under Ms system of killing any 

 foxes who come on to his beat ? Or, perhaps, 

 he salves his conscience by only killing the old 

 foxes, that sadly common trick which Mr. 

 Velveteens is apt to think he has done so cleverly, 

 nobody knows anything about it ! If he has 

 but one litter of cubs on an estate that should 

 show from three to five litters, does he imagine 

 that the M.F.H. does not know what is going 

 on ? And if only cubs and no old foxes are 

 ever seen, does he think that escapes attention, 

 and that he himself is not a marked man ? 



