CH. VIII. ] FOXES v. GAME, 251 
nate leveret is utterly defenceless, and must fall 
a victim to the first fox that happens to pass to 
leeward of it. Old hares too, though better able 
to take care of themselves, must often fall victims 
to their cunning foe, when old rabbits would be out 
of his reach. The lives of young pheasants and 
partridges would, gud foxes, probably be insura- 
ble at about equal rates until the former are able 
to go to bough; but, after that, pheasants are 
comparatively exempt from danger, while a covey 
of partridges clustered all together at night must 
be as easy and tempting a prey as a fleet of gold- 
laden galleons without a convoy would have been 
to a map-of-war in the olden time. I know an 
estate in a part of the country where there were 
formerly no foxes, on which, before their intro- 
duction, sixty or eighty hares were not unfre- 
quently killed in a day’s shooting. Since then, 
however (the coverts on the estate in question 
affording an excellent harbour for foxes), the 
number of hares on it has been gradually de- 
creasing, and now it is almost rare in a day’s 
shooting to kill a tenth part of the former num- 
ber. 
Besides the game actually taken by foxes as 
food, they indulge, I regret to say, in the very 
