CHASING AND RACING 89 



It was not long before I discovered the source of 

 the plague. A certain covert owner, whose affections 

 were more centred on pheasants than on foxes, had 

 instructed his keeper to dig up a Htter of cubs and to 

 rear them in captivity until required. Such a requisi- 

 tion being their transfer, in a bag, to an outlying 

 covert (where there were no pheasants, no rabbits, and 

 no undergrowth, and, consequently, no foxes in statu 

 natura\ what time I had fixed a meet in the vicinity. 

 Now this keeper's idea of fostering fox cubs was to 

 enclose them in a covered-in pig-sty, to throw them the 

 decaying legs of horses or cattle that had succumbed to 

 disease, and never by any chance to clean out their 

 improvized den. Finding them minus their natural 

 covering and almost in extremis he liberated them. 

 ** Hinc nice lachrym^r 



Faith, a M.F.H. has much to contend with ! Of 

 course this temporary check to what, until then, had 

 been such sport as had not been enjoyed in the old 

 country since the halcyon days of Harvey Coombe, 

 brought all sorts of abuse on my devoted head. Some 

 went so far as to say that I had secretly imported mangy 

 cubs from other hunting countries and so brought 

 about the disaster. Colour was given to this libel 

 because, when I had accounted for all foxes in the 

 localities affected, and had dynamited their earths, I 

 did import some very fine and healthy vixens from the 

 non-hunting wilds of Wales and Scotland, knowing 

 that wherever each should draw her own habitation, a 



