NOTITIA VENATICA. 127 



tho purpose intended, I have occasionally seen a fox-cover made by 

 sowing the seed with a crop of oats, beans, or wheat : this practice may 

 do very well where the soil is healthy and the plant indigenous ; but in 

 a stiff clay, like some of the Leicestershire country, it must be nou- 

 rished and cultivated exclusively, or the labour and expense bestowed 

 will, in all probability, end in a failure and disappointment. If the 

 land is wet, it should be well soughed through all the furrows, or the 

 plants will perish everywhere during the first winter, excepting upon 

 the tops of the laud where it is dry and sound. Some covers have suc- 

 ceeded to admii'ation, by first sowing the seeds in a nursery ground and 

 then setting out the plants at two years old, during the autumn. Gorse 

 is a plant which makes a prodigious shoot very late in the year ; it con- 

 sequently becomes settled and rooted in the soil before winter sets in, 

 and the dry weather in the spring and summer does not materially in- 

 jure it, as it would if planted out in March or Api'il. When a furze 

 cover is established, there is still almost as much labour and skill re- 

 qiured to keep it constantly in perfection and sufficiently strong to hold 

 a fox, as there was to produce it. To achieve this, care should be taken 

 to cut about a fifth each year, after it begins to get hollow and weak, 

 untU the whole has undergone the operation, when, after a couple of 

 years' hohday, you may recommence at number one. In speaking of 

 cutting, the system of burning is highly to be recommended, for several 

 reasons ; in the first place the faggots will hardly pay for tying up ; 

 and in the next place, the operation renders the ground perfectly clear 

 from all weeds, which are totally eradicated by the fire : not so the 

 gorse, the* roots of which extend too far into the ground to be injured 

 by the heat ; moreover, the ashes form a most excellent manure to the 

 new shoots, and the long black stumps, which should not be cut ofi" until 

 two years have expired, are a most excellent preventive against persons 

 either riding or walking upon the young buds and destroying them. 

 When the aid of flames is resorted to, the cover should be cut out in 

 quarters, or the whole may be inadvertently set on fire at once, and the 

 day chosen for the conflagration should be one on which the wind blows 

 from a favom-able point ; it is also to be higlily recommended to take 

 the precaution of cutting round the part intended to be burnt, for the 

 space of about four or five yards, to prevent the possibility of the flames 

 extending to the hedges or the adjacent parts. Burning a cover has a 

 most extraordinary eflect upon the hares and rabbits which inliabit it : 

 when the flames are at their greatest height, so paralyzed are these un- 

 fortunate sirflferers by fire, that, instead of attempting to escape, they 

 run headlong into the devouring element, and are thus consumed. Arti- 

 ficial covers are also occasionally made of privet and blackthorn, and 

 even of laurel ; but a severe winter is a terrible destroyer of the latter, 

 the ravages of which two genial seasons M'ill scarcely replace. Osier or 

 withy beds (as they are called in some counties) also form excellent 

 covers, and are invariably favourite places of resort for foxes, partly on 

 account of their principal food, the field-mouse, abounding there ; but 

 more especially because the high banks on which osier beds are formed 

 aflbrding such dry lying even in the wettest weather. I recollect many 



