176 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
dared dine within sound of a horn, and all keepers 
blew horns all night, even as men cannot live on 
air alone, so cannot foxes live on the blast of a horn, 
and so might just as well not exist. Perhaps those 
who suggest the horn-blowing cure would volunteer 
to help keepers to perform an all-night blast—every 
night, say, during June and July; of course, in 
addition to the usual day’s work. Partridge-shooting, 
if only because it is cheap, is bound to remain the 
most popular form of shooting ; and since less can 
be done to prevent, or to make good, the damage 
by foxes to partridges than to other game, foxes 
must give way to partridges. The Ground Game 
Act really sounded the death-knell of foxes by doing 
away with rabbits—their more or less ungrudged 
bread-and-butter ; and the present tendency to cut 
up land into smaller and smaller holdings has kept 
it tolling. The prospects of foxes grow blacker 
apace. With regrettable frequency one hears that 
masters of hounds are finding their countries un- 
tenable owing to the scarcity of foxes and closed 
coverts. 
Hares and rabbits now are scarce enough in 
many districts, in which the time is not far distant 
when there will be ten men, ten dogs, and ten guns 
against each hare and rabbit, where before there 
was only one trio of destruction. The decrease of 
hares and rabbits not only makes scarcer the more 
natural and least-grudged food of foxes, but increases 
