A Glance at the Evohition of a Foxhound 77 



of extermination, when the fox was described as 

 " a stinking beaste whose scent doth spoil the chase 

 of the hare," he was hunted, and not till early 

 Victorian times did he occupy an honoured place in 

 the Hst of animals of venery. It is at this period 

 that the Foxhound began to be a distinct and sepa- 

 rate breed. Somervile, so early as 1735, had urged: 



" A diffrent hound for ev'ry diflf'rent chase 

 Select with judgment." 



But much the Right Hon. D. H. Madden, M.A., in his 

 Study of Shakespeare and of Elizabethan Sport, says 

 (p. 169) applies equally to Somervile's day: 



" But although some sport might thus be had with 

 the fox ere you case him, the final cause of fox- 

 hunting was the destruction of noxious vermin. 



" No word is too bad for * the fox that lives by 

 subtlety.' He is ' a crafty murderer,' and ' subtle 

 as the fox for prey ' is the miscreant who may be 

 likened to the ' fox in stealth.' " 



This custom of giving the fox a bad name survived 

 among sportsmen to the days of Somervile and 

 Beckford, in poetry as well as in prose. For in the 

 classic pages of The Chase the fox is denounced as 

 the wily fox, the felon vile, the conscious villain, and 

 the subtle, pilfering fox. And even in the early years 

 of the nineteenth century there were districts where 

 the church bell was nmg when a fox had been marked 



