44 THE COMPLETE FOXHUNTER 



quantity of dry sticks and other covert, to say nothing 

 of bushes and trees. The wiring-in was irregular, but 

 whoever designed it had done his work well, and there 

 was little or no chance of a fox getting out or of a 

 hound getting in. The mesh of the wire was carried 

 up ten or twelve feet and the top turned inwards, so 

 that a cub could not scramble over, holding on by his 

 toes. The third cage was a little affair, being merely 

 two old barrels inside an enclosure some twenty feet, 

 and wired over so near the ground that there was only 

 just room for a fox to run about. The place was empty 

 when we found it, but it stank of foxes, and there 

 was plentiful evidence that it had been very recently 

 used. 



The cage business is bad enough, but when the 

 cage is a large one the foxes imprisoned therein can 

 run about a little, and are not so likely to contract 

 mange as those which are confined in an old barn or 

 outhouse. It is the confined foxes which are really 

 responsible for the terrible mange epidemic which has 

 visited nearly every part of England during the last 

 ten or twelve years, for if the disease did not actually 

 begin with them, they have certainly been the cause of 

 its continuance in many countries. We are not going 

 to take on ourselves the responsibility of even suggest- 

 ing the original fons et origo of mange, as it is now 

 known among foxes, but there are certain facts in con- 

 nection with the disease in epidemic form that go far 

 to show that the wholesale spreading of the malady 

 was absolutely entirely due to excessive game preser- 

 vation, and we have often wondered whether the pro- 

 prietors of great shoots, when they were killing their 

 thousands of pheasants in a day, ever realised that 

 they were reducing the sport of the local hunt to a 



