516 Practical Game Preserving. 



tolerate. So long as fox-hunting is protracted to so 

 late a period as the bagging of a May fox requires, 

 so long must foxes remain more or less scarce in such 

 districts. 



Then, again, the damage to the farmers' stock is also 

 frequently brought forward as a reason for their being 

 destroyed, and no doubt a considerable number yearly fall 

 victims to the farmers* wiles on this account, but the depre- 

 dations of the varmint amongst poultry and lambs are 

 obviously very often and very much exaggerated. As we 

 said, whenever rabbits are plentiful and easily obtainable, 

 the fox will rarely destroy other animals or birds, except 

 occasionally, when probably the poultry-house will suffer. 

 In the spring of the year, report says more often wrongly 

 than rightly, we fancy that foxes are most destructive 

 to lambs. This we much doubt, and although conceding 

 that once in a way a tender and sleek-looking lamb may 

 be abstracted from the field, still we adhere to the opinion 

 that of the lambs killed and left partly eaten, the mischief, 

 nine times out of ten, may be laid, without fear of error, 

 to the credit of dogs. The only time when foxes touch the 

 lambs is when the cubs are littered ; in such case the vixen, 

 we may suppose, requires the nutritious flesh they supply. 

 Again, when the cubs are large enough to play and air 

 themselves in the sun, they are sometimes supplied with a 

 lamb at which to tear with their milk teeth, and in the 

 skin of which they find great inducements towards play. 

 But systematic robbery of lambs by foxes is, in our opinion, 

 the exception rather than the rule. Hence we look upon 

 fox destruction by farmers as unnecessary. 



