248 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



muzzle they iound part of a brass snare. The wire 

 had fixed itself in such a way that he could scarcely 

 open his mouth, so that he was handicapped both in 

 catching food and eating it. From his appearance 

 it was thought that he had been in this miserable 

 plight for a month. It had been better for the fox 

 if hounds had found him a month earlier. 



A fox, in emergency, will sham death to perfection. 



A Master of Hounds once noosed a fox in a whip 



as he bolted before a terrier from an earth. 



Rascals^ ^ e ^ ox a PP earec * to have been strangled 

 when held up by the scruff of the neck his 

 eyes were seen to be closed, his jaws gaped, and the 

 body hung limply down from the hand. He was 

 placed tenderly on the ground only to dash off 

 into covert. To be over-cunning is a common 

 fault. One fox entered a fowl -house, and amused 

 himself by killing every bird. In departing through 

 the hole by which he had entered, he stuck fast, 

 and was found hanging dead the next morning. 

 Another sought refuge from hounds by jumping on 

 to the low roof of a thatched cottage, and crawling 

 beneath the rafters until he could crawl no farther. 

 It was years before his skeleton was discovered. 

 Some of the foxes found dead on railway lines, by 

 the way, have been put there after death by vul- 

 picides. In olden days the punishment for the crime 

 of fox-killing was a spell in the stocks. Vulpicides 



