210 SHOOTING THE PHEASANT 



but persuade your keepers also, to face the question 

 that a certain sacrifice of pheasants is necessary for 

 the preservation of foxes. Like nearly all other 

 matters connected with this subject, it is, as I have 

 said before, a question of money. A great deal may 

 be done in your own interest, as well as in that of the 

 hunt, by planting suitable gorse coverts, which the 

 foxes will take to, as a rule, in preference to any other 

 covert. In these, after they have grown to a certain 

 height, you may keep a moderate head of rabbits, if you 

 are on terms with your tenants which enable you to do 

 so. It is idle to suppose that foxes will subsist on rabbits 

 when there are plenty of pheasants ; but if they have 

 always got this class of food ready to their mouths, so 

 to speak, they will be the less likely to raid your other 

 coverts for birds ; it will at any rate minimise the 

 evil, and be always popular with the master of hounds, 

 who will be able to make more sure of a find, and be 

 more hkely to get a run out of a moderate-sized gorse 

 covert than from large and straggling woods. 



Crows, ' jackdaws, magpies, jays, and hawks must 

 be constantly kept down in numbers, more especially 

 sparrow-hawks, the most destructive of all in the rear- 

 ing season. As to rooks, they will undoubtedly at 

 times consume pheasant and partridge eggs to a large 



' Carrion and hooded crows, as distinguished from rooks. 



