HOME AND HAUNTS OF THE FOX 83 



There is a difficulty about thinning down cliff 

 foxes, and one Master of Hounds was very much 

 taken aback, on asking permission from the agent to 

 a certain estate to hunt some of them, to receive a 

 letter asking ' where he would like the guns placed.' 

 Mr. Nicholas Snow, when he hunted Exmoor, used 

 regularly to worry the cliff foxes in the summer, in 

 the hope, doubtless fulfilled, that they would be 

 driven inland, and help to stock the Exmoor country. 

 Mr. L. Bligh and the Minehead Harriers success- 

 fully work parts of the West Somerset Cliff for foxes, 

 and no doubt drive a certain number inland. Un- 

 luckily, the prevalence of rabbit-trapping is in the 

 West country a serious danger to foxhunting. I 

 never heard that steel traps — set in the open as they 

 often are — distinguished between rabbits and foxes. 

 Whole tracts of what was the most sporting country 

 in the West have been cleared of foxes, and rabbit- 

 trapping is the chief cause. 



When once a fox family has comfortably settled 

 down inland, it does not, I think, return to the 

 cliffs. I do not say that a fox run near to the sea- 

 shore will not take any refuge that is handy. It is his 

 nature ; but I do not think that foxes migrate from 

 inland coverts to the seashore. ' My foxes have all 

 gone to the cliffs,' a reason which was given to me 



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