i6o SPORT IN EUROPE 



Contrary to English custom, foxes are hunted as vermin by all 



keepers. They are trapped, hunted in their dens with a dackshtuid, 



or duo- out whenever and wherever they can be o"ot. In 

 Fox, ^ "^ 



Mecklenburg it used to be the fashion to keep foxes for 



shooting, sixty to eighty foxes being bagged in one day's driving. The 



fashion is, however, going out now, for the Mecklenburgers have 



found out that it takes about seventy hares per annum to feed a fox, 



and that the real reason of the abundance of foxes is to be souoht in 



the fact that the country's condition is a most favourable one for hares. 



The hare is the most common game in Germany. His numbers 



increase with culture and fertility, provided he is protected against 



foxes, poachers, and birds of prev. He can shift for 

 Hare. 



himself pretty well in the way of food, so winter feeding 



is not necessary. If practised, refuse turnips, turnip cuttings, or 



cabbage leaves are used. Warm, loamy soil is preferred by the hare, 



such as is best for turnips, and the best shoots, therefore, are to 



be found in the sugar-producing districts of Central Germany near 



Halle, Merseburg, and Magdeburg, and, in Silesia, near Breslau. 



Numbers vary from fifty to seventy head per diem for twenty guns, to 

 1, 800 or 2,000 head for ten or twelve guns. The best day's bag of 

 one gun was that of 832 made by the Emperor in 1893 ^^ Neugatters- 

 leben (Baron W. Alvensleben), in the Prussian province of Saxony, near 

 Magdeburg. A year previous the Emperor made the next best record 

 in the neighbourhood at Barby (Herr von Dietze) with 700. 



The ordinary plan of driving is to surround a square with a mixed 

 line, from two to five beaters between each gun, each man slowly 

 walking towards the centre, the whole forming a gradually narrowing 



