MODERN CONDITIONS OF HUNTING 27 



owner has not the right to do as he likes with his land, 

 or the tenant of shooting the right to rear as many 

 half-tame pheasants as he can. We are merely going 

 to state facts, and it is a bare, unvarnished truth that in 

 many districts where this excessive game preservation 

 is carried on foxes have disappeared in wholesale 

 fashion, and the hunting has become little more than a 

 farce. And in many places there is no open, honest 

 hostility to the hunt, but an attempt to hoodwink the 

 master and his field by the substitution of foxes which 

 have been confined, or of real bagmen, for the genuine 

 article. If a covert owner, or a shooting tenant, gives 

 notice that he does not intend to preserve foxes, and 

 that he would rather not have hounds near his coverts, 

 then the master and his following know what to expect, 

 and will probably give the place a wide berth, if only 

 because of the danger of hounds picking up poison. 

 But it is a fact that many covert owners and some 

 tenants of shooting pretend to favour the hunt, and 

 yet are in secret its worst enemies. Some of these men 

 actually invite hounds to meet at their places and draw 

 their coverts (generally in the spring of the year), and 

 when this happens the coverts are never blank, but the 

 foxes which are found, and which are generally killed, 

 are, as a rule, miserable, mangy devils, which have 

 been shut up in a barn or outhouse for weeks, or ever 

 since they were cubs, or have been sent from Leaden- 

 hall Market overnight. 



It is an unfortunate thing that what is known as a bag- 

 man was ever hunted, but it is the case that in quite an 

 early period in the history of foxhunting it was common 

 enough to hunt bagged foxes. As a matter of fact the 

 custom arose through the scarcity of the genuine wild 

 fox during the earlier days of the sport. It need hardly 



