CURIOUS FOXES 17 



the hounds ran into and broke up before I could get up 

 with them, or I should have saved his skin, as a curiosity 

 in this country. But the toughest animals in fox shape 

 I have had to deal with were those without brushes. 

 We were at one of these wizards in the Derry Hill woods, 

 hammering him about for hours, and the foot men in 

 the drives (placing themselves at the point he crossed) 

 knocking him also off his legs with squalors, yet he beat 

 us at last in the dark, although I resolved not to go home 

 without his head. What became of him I could not tell ; 

 but as we could not get two couples of hounds away from 

 the covert, I conclude they finished him off at last, for 

 we never found him again. 



'* Found our fox in Catcomb Wood (a very thick covert 

 of a hundred acres), gave him a couple of turns there, 

 when he went away through Avon Grove to Christian 

 Malford Wood (another thick covert of one hundred and 

 twenty acres), from which he broke over the vale to 

 Turnham Brake, opposite Cowage Copse. Finding the 

 earths stopped, he retraced his ground back to Catcomb 

 Wood, where the hounds gave him another rattler round 

 covert, and raced him away to Christian Malford Wood 

 again. He then broke the lower side, through Bittlesea 

 Wood, on towards Wootton Bassett, where, being headed 

 in the road, he turned to the left over the canal, down 

 through the Dauntsey Vale, across the river Avon, for 

 Malmesbury Common ; here being headed, he ran back by 

 Dray cot Park, through Sutton and Foxham, over the 

 river again and the canal up to Bremhill Grove, where the 

 hounds got up with him, and away this tough old fox came 

 again across the vale, through Avon Grove and Christian 

 Malford Wood without lingering a moment, and was pulled 

 down in the open fields below Bittlesea Copse. The only 



