CHAP, xxx.] FOX-HUNTING. 233 



vering the print of the fore-foot. The fox makes free with a 

 great variety of game, and the demands of his nursery require a 

 plentiful supply. In the hills he lives on lambs, sheep, grouse, 

 and ptarmigan ; in the low country, the staple of his prey is rab- 

 bits, where these are plentiful ; but nothing comes amiss to him, 

 from the field-mouse upwards. The most wary birds, the wood- 

 pigeon and the wild duck, do not escape him, and he destroys a 

 considerable number of the young of the roe. The honey of the wild 

 bee is one of his favourite delicacies ; and vermin-trappers have 

 found no bait more effective to lure him than a piece of honey- 

 comb. His nose is very fine, and he detects the taint of human 

 footstep or hand, for days after it has been communicated. Se- 

 veral ways are tried for evading his suspicions. Some trappers 

 place three or four traps in a circle, and leave them well covered 

 for some days without any bait ; and at the end of that time, 

 when all taint must have left the traps, they place a bait in the 

 centre. Another way is to place the traps in shallow water, and 

 a bait on some bank where he cannot reach it without running a 

 good chance of treading on them. Even when the enemy is in 

 the trap, the victory is not won : and if he escapes, whether 

 whole or maimed, after being trapped, he is too well warned ever 

 to be caught again. Altogether, trapping has never been very 

 successfully practised against the fox in the Highlands, and the 

 old native practice of " fox-hunting," as the professional mode of 

 killing them is called here, is still much preferred. 



Of all ways of earning a livelihood, perhaps there is none that 

 requires a greater degree of hardihood and acuteness than the 

 trade of a vermin-killer in the Highlands meaning by " vermin,' 

 not magpies, crows, and "such small deer," but the stronger and 

 wilder carnivorous natives of the mountain and forest the 

 enemies of the sheep and lambs. In the Highlands he is ho- 

 noured with the title of "The Fox-hunter;" but the Highland 

 fox-hunter leads a very different life, and heads a very different 

 establishment, from him of Leicestershire. When you first 

 come upon him in some wild glen, you are somewhat startled at 

 his appearance and bearing. He is generally a wiry active man, 

 past middle age, slung round with pouches and belts for carrying 

 the implements of his trade ; he wears a huge cap of badger-skin, 

 and carries an old-fashioned long-barrelled fowling-piece. At 



