226 THE FOX 



covert, and the others moved to a chain of wood- 

 lands six or seven miles off. Two were killed by 

 hounds when they were obviously making for the 

 home covert — one, indeed, was killed within a field 

 or two of the fence. One vixen laid up her cubs there 

 in the following spring, and for some years afterwards 

 the other fox took up his abode in a gorse near a 

 village, was often hunted and never caught, but met 

 his end at last. He was found drowned in a ditch 

 with a rabbit-trap on his leg. 



The point I draw attention to is that the two that 

 were killed were the two that tried to run straight, 

 and they were both in their second year. The vixen, 

 and the old dog fox that was murdered at last, never 

 seriously ran at all : they dodged, crept, twisted, turned, 

 laid down in ditches, crawled down hedgerows, until 

 they beat hounds, or the Master lost patience and 

 ordered the pack off to draw for a better fox. 



With regard to the fate of the fox that was 

 trapped, this is a new danger to hunting which has 

 arisen of late years, and it is a very serious one. 

 Trapping and foxhunting are incompatible. Farmers 

 who employ a professional rabbit-trapper are not 

 always at heart hostile to foxhunting, but they must 

 come to see that they cannot have both. I know 

 three countries at least which are in a very precarious 



