MODERN CONDITIONS OF HUNTING 49 



similar care was exercised when they were turned 

 down. 



For a generation or two the trials of new blood 

 were successful enough, but there came a time when 

 owing to the fact that in many places foxes were no 

 longer preserved, while in other districts they were 

 destroyed in wholesale fashion, the demand began to 

 exceed the supply, and then the foreign fox was 

 bought in large numbers, and the mange era set in 

 shortly afterwards. Most of these foreign foxes came, 

 and still come, from various parts of Germany, and as 

 foxes they are good enough. Indeed, we have heard 

 of their giving the greatest satisfaction, but when 

 the demand for increased numbers arose, the dealers, 

 or consigners, began to be careless ; the consignees 

 (not the buyers) were equally so, and by the time the 

 foxes reached the right hands, many of them, though 

 not showing any signs of the disease, were infected 

 by mange. That overcrowding, and foul kennels or 

 cages, with improper food, were the original causes of 

 virulent mange is almost certain, and there is reason to 

 believe that very often a consigner of foreign foxes 

 was collecting his cargo one by one, or in litters for 

 weeks, and even longer, before they were dispatched. 

 It is thought that during the process of collection too 

 many foxes were herded together in dirty places, and 

 that when the time for sending them off arrived they 

 were packed too closely in dirty crates, and also that 

 from the moment they were caught until they were 

 turned into an English earth they were, to say the 

 least of it, carelessly fed. 



Mange takes some time to declare itself, but it 

 is certain that some of the German foxes were 

 mangy when they arrived, while it is also practically 

 4 



