278 AN ENGLISH GAMEKEEPER. 



the cubs must have been in a poor game 

 country, and not helped in their feeding in the 

 way I have explained, you must allow for that," 

 says I. " You should take the trouble to feed 

 your cubs, bringing them all you can in the 

 way of rats, hedgehogs, young rooks, jays, 

 squirrels, and old buck rabbits. If you have 

 too many rabbits and have to kill some off, 

 kill a doe rabbit, and give it to the cubs. If 

 you can do all this, you can set down your 

 loss in hen birds at about four a week for one 

 month, that is sixteen old birds killed by the 



vixen." 



Suppose these sixteen old birds brought up 

 eight young birds each, that would make a hun- 

 dred and twenty-eight wild birds. The tame 

 cubs, for if they have no mother they are little 

 better than tame foxes, will not be easily turned 

 off from your hen coops, often killing the hens 

 and fifty young birds in a single night. 



" Fifty, did you say, Wilkins ? " Yes, sir, 

 and I say that some keepers have had as many 

 as a hundred and fifty killed by the foxes in one 

 night at the coops. The woods will stink 



