204 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



bit of fur or feather be found about the earth. Gypsies 

 are not more careful of observing this rule than a vixen- 

 fox. After a meal of this sort the brood go back to the 

 mouth of the earth, and top off their dinner with a dessert 

 from the maternal store, madame looking proudly on while 

 they frolic and play about her, darting into the earth now 

 and again at some real or imaginary noise. 



The amount of assistance madame gets from her hus- 

 band these days is a matter much disputed. Some earth- 

 stoppers maintain that he gives none whatever ; others, like 

 Simpson, that she is much assisted by the " old man "; 

 and if vixen is killed, Simpson declares, he takes up her 

 household duties as well as he can. 



Cannon, an earth-stopper to the Quorn Hunt, with 

 whom I once had a night tramp, says foxes are not so 

 wicked as they are painted. " It is," he says, " only when 

 the master of a family has been killed, and madame is 

 unfortunate in hunting rabbits, and becomes desperate and 

 reckless of her own safety, that she resorts to stealing poul- 

 try and young lambs." This view seems rather extreme. 

 But possibly the diversity of opinion among earth-stoppers 

 and hunting men is owing to the fact that there are foxes 

 and foxes. One thing is certain : sometimes they will take 

 away a single lamb or hen, and again they will kill twenty 

 hens in a single night, hardly tasting their flesh. This, the 

 earth-stopper says, is the work of a dog-fox who is out for 

 a lark and not to satisfy hunger. Simpson declares that a 

 fox never steals a chicken or a lamb from the farmer on 

 whose farm the earth is laid, but will go a long distance 

 from home to the neighbourhood of some other fox, who 



