84 Game and Foxes. 



this way the latter get a worse name than they 

 really deserve. In their own interests hunting 

 men should encourage trapping, for stoats and 

 weasels, if abundant, kill a lot of poultry, and a 

 farmer is only too ready to assert that foxes 

 have destroyed his fowls, because he is then 

 assured of whole or partial compensation. The 

 poultry fund is in lots of cases drawn upon to 

 satisfy the claims of those who have lost fowls 

 owing to stoats, and for this reason alone hunting- 

 men should do their best to encourage careful and 

 skilful trapping, for a steel-trap can be used 

 without the slightest danger to foxes. Besides, 

 there is another reason for suggesting this, for the 

 more vermin existing the less there is for foxes 

 to live upon and the greater the chances that 

 the latter will attack poultry. Where vermin are 

 numerous, foxes have a harder struggle for 

 existence, and what damage they do becomes 

 far more noticeable. 



The utmost sympathy is felt by the writer for a 

 keeper who is expected to preserve game in a 

 hunting district and is yet denied the assistance of 

 steel-traps for fear a fox should be injured. He 

 has undertaken an almost impossible task, and, 

 notwithstanding all the ingenuity with which he 

 may dispose his box-traps and other clumsy 



