FOXHOUNDS 217 



running about the country than there were fifty years 

 ago. Indeed, Mr. Vyner more than sixty years ago 

 wrote of the foxes of the last century (the eighteenth) 

 "being far stouter in their nature than many of the 

 mongrel-bred vermin of the present age, stained as 

 they are by the introduction of French blood." He 

 then went on to explain that in the time he referred 

 to — viz. the eighteenth century — there were so few 

 game preserves that foxes travelled great distances for 

 their food, and were wilder and shyer in their habits 

 than they would have been if they had been enabled 

 constantly to procure their food close at home. Now 

 this was written something like a generation before 

 what is now known as excessive game preservation 

 came into fashion, and almost two generations before 

 mange amongst foxes made its appearance in the 

 epidemic form which has ravaged the country during 

 the last ten or twelve years. 



If foxes were degenerating in Vyner's days they 

 must have been singularly magnificent animals at some 

 earlier date of the hunting period, but one is inclined 

 to think that there was not much amiss with the vul- 

 pine tribe until comparatively recent times, and that 

 even now it is only a proportion of foxes which are bad, 

 and that the best of the species are as good as ever they 

 were. Those who had hunted regularly for some years 

 before mange became bad, and who hunted through a 

 genuine mange visitation, could not help seeing the 

 difference between the foxes they first knew and many 

 of the foxes they encountered during the mange period. 

 But even when matters were at their worst an occasional 

 fox of wonderful stamina was found, which fox just 

 merely suggested that all the breed had not become 

 degenerate, that an odd good one was left. Since 



