LETTER XI IT. 133 



their general hunting ground was above the earth, in 

 search of mice and beetles. 



It is a well-known fact, that foxes seldom prey at 

 home, and I have often seen the old vixen go straight 

 through all this host of rabbits, away over the hill-, and 

 return in about half an hour, with a rabbit in her mouth, 

 to her litter. When I kept foxhounds, there was a 

 farmer, whose house and farmyard stood within one field 

 of a very favourite covert, producing always one, and 

 generally two litters of cubs every season. He told me 

 he never lost any of his poultry by them; and, what was 

 more extraordinary still, that one summer one of his 

 hens hatched a brood of chickens in the wood hedge, not 

 a hundred yards from the earth where the cubs were 

 bred, and brought them all safe home. Some people 

 may fancy I am romancing, but I am doing nothing of 

 the kind. The statements I make are perfectly true. 

 My own farm-yard was surrounded by coverts, in which 

 I had two or three litters of foxes bred every season ; 

 and although poultry of every kind roamed at large 

 about the fields, we seldom missed a fowl, duck, or goose. 



The really wild fox does very little mischief either to 

 game or poultry ; but I must admit that the Gallic im- 

 portations play the rogue in a hen-roost occasionally 

 There are certainly distinct species of foxes, and their 

 habits are different also. My brother fox-hunters may 

 think it a strange thing for a. master of hounds to do, 

 but if a farmer complained to me of a fox visiting his 

 hen-roost, I gave him directions to shoot him, if he could, 

 well knowing he must be either a cur or mangy. Does 

 it ever occur to game preservers that their pheasants are 

 roostivg in the coverts, long before foxes ai^e stirring^ 



