USS THOUGHTS UPON HUNTING, 



foxes : in one week you may deltroy as many a{> 

 would liave fhewn you fport for a whole feafon. 

 We killed a bitch-fox one morning, with feven 

 Touno; ones, which were all alive : I can afiure 

 you we miffed them very much the next year, and 

 had many blank days, which we needed not to 

 have had, but through our own fault. I fhould 

 tell you, this notable feat was performed, lite- 

 rally, on the Jifji of j4pnL If you will hunt 

 late in the feafon, you fhould, at leaft, leave 

 your terriers behind you. I hate to kill any ani- 

 mal out of feafon. A hen-pheafant, with egg, I 

 have heard, is famous eating; yet I can affure 

 you I never mean to tafte it ; and the hunting a 

 bitch-fox, big with young, appears to me cruel 

 and unnatural. A gentleman of my acquaint- 

 ance, who killed moH of his foxes at this feafon, 

 was humoroufly called, midwife io the foxes. 



Arc not the foxes heads, which are fo pom- 

 poufly expofcd to view, often prejudicial to fport 

 in fox-hunting ? How many foxes are wantonly 

 deitroyed, without the leafl fervice to the hounds 

 or fport to the mafter, that the huntfman may fay 

 he has killed" fo many brace ! How many are 

 digged out and killed, when blood is not wanted, 

 for no better reafon ! — foxes that another day, 

 perhaps, the earths well ftoppcd, might have run 

 hours, and died gallantly at Lift. I remember 

 myfelf to have fecn a pack of hounds kill three 



in 



