Il6 FOXES AT HOME. 



The only person with hounds in the above 

 run, when they marked their fox to ground, was 

 Charles Brackley, whose marvellous knowledge 

 of the country and probable point of the fox 

 enabled him to keep in touch with the pack 

 when the rest of the field were brought to a 

 standstill by the River Blackwater and the 

 South- Eastern Railway ! 



Daniel in his " Rural Sports " gives the 

 following instance : 



'' The old Duke of Grafton had his hounds at Croydon^ 

 and occasionally had foxes taken in Whittlebury Forest and 

 sent up in the venison cart to London. The foxes thus 

 brought were carried the next hunting morning in a hamper 

 behind the Duke's carriage and turned down before the 

 hounds. In the course of this plan a fox was taken from a 

 coppice in the forest and forwarded as usual. Some time 

 after a fox was caught in the same coppice whose size and 

 appearance was so strikingly like that got at the same spot 

 that the keepers suspected it was the fox they had been in 

 possession of before, and directed the man who took him to 

 London to inquire whether the fox hunted on such a day 

 was killed or escaped. The latter having been the case, the 

 suspicion of the keepers was strengthened. Some short 

 time after a fox was caught in the sar/ie coppice, which those 

 concerned in the taking were well assured was the fox they 

 had bagged twice before. To be, however, perfectly able ta 

 identify their old acquaintance should another opportunity 

 offer, previous to his third journey to town, he had one ear 

 split and some holes punched in the other. With these 

 marks he was despatched to London, was again hunted and 

 escaped, and within a very few weeks was retaken in the 



