66 FOXES AT HOME. 



pegged it down in the middle of a ride where 

 cubs used to come out to play from an earth at 

 about thirty yards distance, in cover so dense 

 that it was quite impossible to see them on it, 

 and having done so I proceeded down the ride 

 to a bend where I determined to watch till they 

 appeared. On arriving at the bend and looking 

 back I saw the peewit was gone, and hastily 

 returning I found it on the earth, a cub having 

 evidently taken it when my back was turned. 

 I pegged it dowm again in the same place, but 

 watched in vain till dark. The plover was gone 

 next morning. I now got a live fowl and tied it 

 on the ride, and walked backwards to the bend 

 in the ride, but nothing appeared that evening, 

 and the next morning the hen was alive and well. 

 I then pegged it down o// the earth, where the 

 cubs, which I could hear in the hole, would have to 

 brush past it on coming out, and early next day 

 went to see the result — '' The hen was still there, 

 but the foxes w^ere gone ! " The vixen w^as 

 evidently so frightened by my extraordinary and 

 stupid (not to say cruel) behaviour that, expect- 

 ing a trap, she shifted the litter out of a covert 

 of over 300 acres to an old dry drain nearly 

 two miles away, where they remained till old 



