62 HUNTING. 



happily are fully and courteously recognised, the presents of 

 venison being in proportion to the damage sustained. At one 

 time many magnificent deer fell by the bullet of the poacher, 

 who maimed and mutilated more than he killed ; but these 

 atrocities were perpetrated during that period of demoralisation 

 when the country was not regularly and systematically hunted. 

 Such an unhappy state of affairs will, we trust, never recur. 

 We scarcely think it is likely to do so until existing Acts of 

 Parliament for the preservation of game and deer have been 

 repealed, and replaced by special Acts for the encouragement 

 and protection of the poacher. 



THE FOX AND HIS HABITS. 



We shall not be very wide of the mark if we describe the fox 

 as the 'spoilt darling of the nineteenth century,' and at the same 

 time as the most irreconcilable to civilisation of our fauna. 



No one, so far as we know, has ever given the stoat or the 

 weasel, the badger or the otter, a fair chance of proving whether 

 by care and kindness and a regular diet they can be so far 

 domesticated as to refrain from destroying at all times and 

 seasons and out of sheer cussedness, what they may consider 

 their legitimate and lawful prey in the shape of flesh, fowl, or 

 fish. With the fox, on the contrary, the experiment has been 

 repeatedly tried that he can be tamed to a certain extent, as 

 regards contact with human beings, is undoubted. He may, if 

 taken as a cub, be handled, played with, and perhaps, though 

 he is not exactly lavender water at the best of times, may be 

 taught habits of cleanliness, sufficient to secure his admission 

 under protest to the house. Nay, more, he may be brought 

 to live on terms of amity with his natural enemy the 

 dog, or his very neutral ally the cat, but one instinct of the 

 savage state will always remain so thoroughly ingrained as to be 

 ineradicable. With poultry or rabbits he can never be trusted, 

 or, to speak more correctly, he can thoroughly be trusted to 

 pounce on and kill them. It is the old Adam, the nature which 



