MODERN CONDITIONS OF HUNTING 41 



time, and here it may be remarked that cubs of from 

 six to eight months old, which have been kept in cap- 

 tivity, will often look just as well, at a cursory glance, 

 as wild cubs. If they have been well fed, and kept in 

 not too dirty a place, and have had some room in 

 which to move about, they will hardly have begun to 

 assume that shabbiness of coat which would, in an 

 ordinary way, attack them a little later. Even if they 

 have become infected with the germs of mange, they 

 will hardly show it in the early days of cub-hunting, 

 and in point of fact many of them will pass muster 

 with hunting folk of experience. 



And here it may be mentioned that the proofs we put 

 forward in connection with the tricks played on foxes 

 by certain gamekeepers are not gathered from stories, 

 but are the results of personal knowledge and investi- 

 gation, and in several cases the true state of the case 

 was brought to light by the merest accident. Thus it 

 once happened that we were present when a certain 

 pack of hounds of great reputation drew a covert, also 

 of great reputation, for the first time that season. The 

 date was mid-September, the hour of meeting six 

 o'clock, and as the weather was fine there was a very 

 big muster. Indeed, there were quite a hundred riders 

 drawn up in a grass field which bordered one side of the 

 wood, and word was passed about that at least two 

 litters of stub-bred foxes had their quarters in the 

 covert. Hounds opened immediately, but no fox went 

 away, and the master afterwards remarked that he had 

 seen no old fox in the covert, nor had he heard of one. 

 But cubs were so numerous a moment later that the 

 fact of there being no old fox on the move was un- 

 noticed. The covert was very dense, and there was 

 little scent, but hounds killed a brace of cubs, if not 



