THE NORTH DURHAM COUNTRY. 7 



meets. The covert is a larch plantation, which at one time 

 had heather and whin all through it, and as long as these 

 lasted it was a certain find. And here I may remark that all 

 through the best part of the North Durham country larch 

 plantations with a heather bottom form the best coverts ; but 

 as the trees grow big the heather dies away, and thus it restdts 

 that the lying gradually disappears. When a piece ol land is 

 newly planted with larch in this particular country, or when 

 an old plantation from which the timber has been cleared is 

 replanted, it takes five or six years for the bottom to become 

 thick. But it does so' automatically, and when once foxes 

 have realised that there is good, quiet lying in the young 

 plantations they seem to prefer them to any other sort of lying. 

 Gorse, like heather, is natural to the countries I am writing 

 about, and the best coverts are often made by a combination 

 of the two plants v/ith a plentiful sheltering of young tre'cs. I 

 may mention also' that spruce and common Scottish fir are 

 planted with the larch as a protection to the latter, and the 

 young spruce of eight to fifteen years old often fo'rm a most 

 impenetrable thicket. Indeed, though foxes as a rule breed 

 underground in the North, one occasionally knows of litters 

 which have been reared in the open, and notably in the Tower 

 Wood at Greencroft^ — sometime during the 'eighties — a vixen 

 had her cubs resting on the broad, interlaced branches of two 

 spruce trees at a height of about 4ft. from the ground. 



Young plantations are, as a matter of course, well fenced, 

 and for months at a time no one but a gamekeeper — or perhaps 

 a poacher — will ever be inside the fence. But as the trees 

 grow, and grass takes the place of heather, it is, except when 

 there is very strict game preserving, the custom to allow the 

 neighbouring farmer to pasture young stock in these planta- 

 tions, and this it is that causes a constant change ol covert 

 on the part of the foxes, for it must be understood that the 

 growing of larch is one of the industries of the district, and 

 nearly all the trees come down when they are big enough to 

 be sold for pit props. I have mentioned these facts about the 

 coverts because there is so much difference between the coverts 

 of the northern and southern hunting countries. The oak 

 copse with a hazel bottom is unknown in the counties of 

 Durham and Northumberland, for though there is plenty of 



