MODERN CONDITIONS OF HUNTING 51 



mange would be an erroneous one. Look at it from 

 every point of view, and one always works round to 

 the same conclusion, viz. that the destruction of foxes, 

 or keeping them in captivity, are the primary causes 

 of mange, and that there would be no reason for 

 destroying old foxes or kidnapping cubs were it not 

 for the desire to have more game on the land than 

 there was a decade or two ago. 



To turn to another subject which still agitates the 

 hunting community, barbed wire is now a recognised 

 evil, but hunting people are becoming so thoroughly 

 accustomed to it, and in some countries are so well able 

 to cope with it, that barbed-wire troubles are in these 

 days purely local, and seldom heard of outside the 

 confines of the hunt in which they exist. Indeed, 

 barbed wire is now such a necessary, under certain 

 conditions, that it is no use attempting to ignore its 

 existence, and yet it is very often possible to have it 

 taken down during the hunting season. The fact is 

 that barbed wire is cheap and lasting. It may cost 

 more to put up a strong wire fence of several strands 

 than to build up a timber fence of equal strength, but 

 the wire lasts longer than the timber, and the process 

 of putting it up does not involve so much labour. And 

 on thousands of estates there is no timber available 

 for good posts and rails, and then wire is used by 

 owners and tenants alike, and this is a fact which 

 hunting people have to face. But the plan of running 

 a strand or two of barbed wire through an old fence is a 

 most pernicious one, because the wire gradually destroys 

 the fence. Few farmers seem to see the importance of 

 this point, but as a matter of fact even the life of a 

 decaying fence is greatly shortened when it is mended 

 with wire, and a new, growing fence is often quickly 



