V 



A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 



It was inevitable in these tremendous times that 

 among the many voices suggesting various drastic 

 measures for our salvation, those of Mr. Brown 

 and Mr. Smith, the poultry farmers, should be 

 heard loud as any advocating the extirpation of 

 foxes, a measure, they say, which would result in 

 a considerable addition to the food supply of the 

 country in the form of eggs and chickens. Even 

 so do the fruit-growers remind us in each recurring 

 spring that it would be an immense advantage to 

 the country if the village children were given one 

 or two holidays each week in March and April, and 

 sent out to hunt and destroy queen wasps, every 

 wasp brought in to be paid for by a bun at the 

 public cost. That the wasp, an eater of ripe fruit, 

 is also for six months every year a greedy devourer 

 of caterpillars and flies injurious to plant life, is a 

 fact the fruit-grower ignores. The fox, too, has 

 his uses to the farmer, seeing that he subsists 

 largely on rats, mice, and voles, but he has a greater 

 and nobler use, as the one four-footed creature left 

 to us in these islands to be hunted, seeing that 



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