DIFFERENCE OF SCENT IN FOXES 119 



began di-awing again. I am also convinced that in March, 

 when hares are cKcketing, their scent is stronger than that of a 

 fox. Among the many things that are worthy of remark, as 

 beautiful facts in the arrangement of nature, to save the mother 

 and her offspring, are those as to the vixen fox when heavy 

 with cubs, and the brooding hen-pheasant when on her eggs. I 

 have seen hounds, when they could scarce own the line of a 

 heavy vixen, rattle merrily away on the dog fox ; and I have 

 known hen-pheasants sit on their eggs undisturbed, and safely 

 hatch, within a foot of a ride, wherein the cubs were in the 

 habit of playing, and up which the old foxes passed frequently. 

 Of this I am also sure, that scents differ in different foxes, and 

 that a pack may divide, be simultaneously running over similar 

 lands, and the scent with the one and the other be widely 

 different. In illustration of the instances I have seen, I offer a 

 day with my hounds at Haleweston. My two men went after 

 the smallest body of hounds, to stop and turn them back to me : 

 each had a fox before them. They could not stop the smaller 

 body, in cover or out of cover, the scent was so brilliant ; but 

 after a beautiful burst, they were stopped, and the fox before 

 them saved, by his having been com'sed by a sheep-dog. In the 

 meantime, I had a long, slow run with a multitude of checks, 

 with my brother to assist me, and, at the end of two houi-s, 

 hunted down and killed the fox. While in the cover, where we 

 found at one and the same moment, this variety of scent existed, 

 and continued when we each went away. My father's hunts- 

 man, Tom Oldaker, always said, the most unerring sign he ever 

 knew of there being no scent was when the gossamer-webs, in 

 lines, stretched thickly over the grass. I have seen an exception 

 to that rule ; and indeed there is no sort of weather that I have 

 not known a scent to exist in, or not to exist in. " A southerly 

 wind, and a cloudy sky," may do very well for a song ; but I am 

 convinced that there is a greater tendency to scent in a clear, 

 harsh, north and north-east wind. When rain is in the air, to 

 come, but not yet come, that is against a scent ; the rain down, 

 even without a change of wind, and the chance of scent is better. 



