14 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



to where he had seen a fox. To' breed foxes and to hunt them 

 were the great aims of his life, and the moment one season was 

 over he began to find out what litters he had and what others 

 there were in the district, and when these were located he 

 woixld watch them right through the summer. During the 

 warm weather of midsummer he would spend hours watching 

 young foxes playing round the earths, for he had constructed 

 shelters he could creep into unsuspected, and get close to these 

 same earths. A hundred years before he was bom a small 

 amount of coal had been taken out of the very top of Broom- 

 shields hill, and certain pitfalls had been formed which made 

 famous breeding places for foxes. For many years there was 

 a breed in each of two pitfalls close together in a young planta- 

 tion, and owing to the lie ol the ground it was possible to get 

 within fifty feet of these earths almost at any time. The cubs 

 from the two earths would often number almost a dozen, and 

 as the summer wore on they were regularly trained so that 

 when hounds came they would leave at once, and not wait to be 

 killed in covert. 



The modus operandi was quite simple. A fine, sunny day 

 would be chosen, when the cubs would be basking or playing 

 near the earth. Their proprietor and a friend, or gamekeeper, 

 would then creep up to the boundary and throw a couple of 

 sharp terriers over the wall, climbing over themselves and 

 rushing one to each earth, the earths being only a few feet 

 beyond the wall. If a cub chanced to be very near the earth 

 he might get in, but nine times out of ten they were further 

 afield in the young plantation. The terriers quickly found 

 them out, and as each cub came to the earth he was headed 

 off. For half an hour at least the hunting would go on, the 

 cubs trying the earths time after time without success. After 

 a while the terriers would be called off and taken away, and 

 the whole party would reoross the wall — there being steps in 

 a certain place — and, entering the shelter, would in the next 

 ton minutes or so see every cub in the covert disappear into one 

 or other of the earths. This performance would be repeated 

 a week later, and then once or twice more before the season 

 opened, and the cubs quickly discovered that with terriers 

 behind them there was safety in flight, and at the first sign 

 of being hunted would break for the gill lees than half a mile 



