3i8 HUNTING PRELIMINARIES. 



taken by foxes is not sufficiently large to spoil a game 

 preserver's amusement, and should be cheerfully borne by 

 shooting men who understand that the principle of " give 

 and take " should govern every branch of sport. The chief 

 offenders in this respect are shooting tenants, who as a rule 

 take no interest in country affairs, and are entirely in the 

 hands of their servants. In the vast majority of cases their 

 gamekeepers shoot every fox which comes within range, 

 and never let off an old one. When, for shame sake, they 

 spare a litter after killing the vixen, their mercy is of little 

 use ; for the cubs, having no one to show them about the 

 country, degenerate into the short running kind, which give 

 no sport. The cubs that are brought up on flesh of various 

 sorts, suffer more or less from indigestion, on account 

 of being deprived of the fur or feathers, which are as 

 necessary a constituent of their food as is hay or straw in 

 that of horses largely fed on corn. From dyspepsia, their 

 coats get a mangy appearance ; although of course parasitic 

 mange can be set up only by contagion. Shooting men and 

 gamekeepers should understand that the rearing of cubs 

 without the vixen, cannot be received by hunting men as 

 an act of conciliation. When a so-called sportsman of 

 this kind comes into possession, usually his first act is to 

 request the local M.F.H. not to draw his woods until they 

 have been shot, in some cases more than once. This means 

 that hounds do no cub-hunting in these coverts, and probably 

 do not get into them until after Christmas. When many of 

 the woods in a country are occupied in a similar manner, 

 it is evident that for half the season a considerable portion 

 of the hunt territory is unavailable. Consequently, an 

 M.F.H. often has the greatest difficulty in arranging his 

 meets, and in more than one instance a fewer number of hunt- 

 ing days per week has been the result. Very often, when 

 the time at last arrives for the drawing of such coverts, 



