THE BRAES OF DERWENT COUNTRY. 87 



cases out of twenty turn away from the fires, they go back 

 to these earths as soon as the fires are out and the watchman 

 has departed, and use them again, both to lie in and for 

 breeding, as if there were never any fires to scare them away. 

 Strangers to the country who have been told of the facts will 

 sometimes hardly credit them ; but they are quite true, never- 

 theless, and thei system haa been in vogue for many years 

 and always successful. 



Going up the river from Allansford the coverts on the north 

 side of the stream include a wooded flat and gradually sloping 

 banks which lie to the south, and which, one would think, 

 would be the spot most particularly favoured by foxes. But 

 the longer I live the more I find the orthodox theories about 

 foxes to be frequently wrong, and though these Mosswood 

 Banks are an ideal covert to look at — having a strong under- 

 growth, a southern aspect, and being nearly a mile from a 

 road, and always dry — foxes are generally found on the flat 

 below, where the land is frequently wetter, or on the preci- 

 pitous cliffs of the Sneep beyond. On the flat are some 

 small grass enclosures, and across one of these runs an old 

 stone drain, which foxes use, and where one has occasionally 

 got to ground. From this drain I have seen a fox bolted by 

 a squib, and while operations were in progress an old man 

 who had brought a spade, and whom I knew as a rabbit- 

 catcher, told me that he had over a period of years taken 

 more than thirty foxes from that drain. This man had lived 

 at Mosswood Cottages, barely a mile away, and had worked 

 on the estate for many years, and during all the time he had 

 procured foxes for a local bird stuffer, who " set them up " 

 in a big case, the fox generally with a stuffed rabbit in its 

 mouth, and sent them to the colliery villages to be raffled 

 for at one shilling a ticket. The Durham miner is, as a rule, 

 a fine friend to foxhunting, being both keen and enthusiastic, 

 and every spring many litters are bred almost within a stone's 

 throw of the colliery villages, and seldom disturbed. Indeed, 

 if the vixen moves her cubs, it is because she has been 

 bothered by boys or prowling dogs, and never because 

 the miners object to her presence. Sometimes 



there is a litter of cubs close by, whose whereabouts 

 are known to all the inhabitants of a colliery village, and the 



