222 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



danger. Early cubs run the most risk, for there is a 

 danger of their being killed by late hunting packs. 

 At such times the vixen has been seen slipping off 

 from a furze cover carrying a cub in her mouth, and 

 if the earth is disturbed she moves them at once. 

 Judging by the trouble taken by a vixen to put them 

 in a place of safety, she is the most anxious mother 

 known in the animal world. A vixen has been known 

 to carry away a whole litter to a distance of three 

 miles in one night when the cubs were about ten 

 days old and beginning to be able to see. At this 

 early age their chief danger is the " fox-taker," a char- 

 acter less familiar to the general reader than other types 

 of rural malefactors. These men train their terriers 

 to slip into the earth and drag out the cubs un- 

 hurt, which are then sold to London dealers. The 

 dealers keep the cubs, feed them well, and sell 

 them to people who wish to restock some foxless 

 part of their country. Apart from the obviously bad 

 taste of encouraging the stealing of some one else's 

 foxes, this plan has another disadvantage ; for foxes 

 so purchased are almost always mangy, owing to the 

 cramped and often dirty quarters they have occupied 

 when in captivity, and wherever released they find out 

 and make use of the neighbouring earths, so that every 

 native fox which enters them for some time afterwards 

 catches the disease. The worst plague of mange ever 

 known among English foxes, which spread among 

 foxes from Windsor to the mouth of the Severn, was 

 propagated in the first instance by cubs bought to 

 be turned down. It is possible that foxes are now 



