Fox Preservation Traffic in Foxes. 531 



must be ploughed up, and all but about fifteen yards square 

 in the centre well planted with gorse and broom, and any 

 small hedge shrubs obtainable. About two yards from the 

 limit of the gorse, in the centre square, a ditch about eighteen 

 inches or two feet deep should be dug out in an irregular 

 circle, and a fair network of fox-spouts or burrows be 

 dug out in the within contained space, the spouts about 

 twelve inches by six inches. These should be fairly closely 

 covered in with any rough materials which will keep soil 

 out of them. In the centre the runs should converge to 

 a chamber or two, these being covered by big tree-roots 

 and the like piled in dome form. Afterwards, the whole 

 affair should be covered up with any material, and be finally 

 finished off with gravelly soil, some one or two downward 

 passages being left ; and, finally, gorse, broom and briar 

 seed may be scattered about. This earth and gorse covert 

 combined will give as fine a fox-preserve as one can need, 

 and, if it be only managed with a fair amount of care and 

 consideration, must prove a very productive nursery. 



Carefully-built regularly-formed artificial earths we never 

 found of much worth. As rearing-places for cubs they 

 are passably satisfactory, but not as real places for breeding 

 and maintaining a head of foxes in. Fox-courts are of 

 equally little practical value, and very unremunerative 

 concerns. The great secret of maintaining the varmints 

 is to leave them unmolested, and provide them with plenty 

 of rabbits about their earths. 



It may be as well to say a word or two about the traffic 

 in foxes. It is nefariously engaged in as largely as the 

 traffic in game eggs. No one ought to obtain foxes, either 



