182 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



whippers-in disappeared into tlie covert. Five minutes passed, 

 and the field rode round to the far side, thinking the huntsman 

 had taken out the fox to break him up. Then suddenly the 

 huntsman appeared, cast his hounds all round the covert, 

 but could not hit off his fox. Then there was a consultation 

 among the authorities, and it transpired that hounds had 

 thrown up in the centre of the covert, and could make nothing 

 more of it. Orders to draw another place were given, and 

 the cavalcade moved off, but before a quarter of a mile had 

 been covered there came a ringing view holloa from the covert 

 which had just been left. Hounds were rushed back, and as 

 the holloas were from inside hounds were taken in. What 

 they found was that the late Mr. J. H. Greaves, of Sutton on 

 the Forest, had viewed the fox quite twenty feet up a tree, 

 and he (the fox) had reached his security through running 

 up the trunk of a falleii tree which was resting against the 

 sound one. Someone climbed the tree, the fox dropped down, 

 then another, and, I think, a third, but I will not trust my 

 memory beyond a brace of foxes. Anyhow, one was killed, 

 and a second gave another hunt, and examination revealed 

 the fact that by jumping some five feet on to a suspended 

 branch, foxes had a fine ladder which took them into security, 

 and from the marks on this ladder it was plain that it had 

 been in use for long enough. All hunting people know that 

 tree-climbing foxes are by no means uncommon. 



The first I ever saw came from a willow by the side of a 

 brook in the Heythrop country, and the fox — or at all events 

 one from the same place — I saw hunted twice in the same 

 season. But the bowl where the fox curled up at the top of 

 an old cut willow was not more than eight feet above the 

 ground, and this is about the usual height for a tree-fox. The 

 York and Ainsty fox was, however, quite twenty feet above 

 the ground, and was the only fox I ever knew of who did 

 the ladder trick. "When the late Mr. John Clavering was 

 living at Greencroft in the county of Durham I once went 

 there for a day's rook shooting at the end of May. Mr. 

 Clavering did not hunt, but was a fine fox preserver and before 

 we began on the rooks he told me he could show me a litter 

 of cubs. I knew all the Greencroft coverts well, as I fre- 

 quently shot there, and had seen them drawn by hounds scores 



