1 2 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



Order CARNIVORA. Fam. GANIDjE. 



FOX. 



Canis vulpes, L. 



Westmorland is too mountainous to be a great fox-hunting 

 country, but the sister county offers good opportunities for sport, 

 especially in the Cumbrian plain. The anonymous author of an 

 admirable pamphlet, entitled The Cumberland Foxhounds, tells us 

 that fox-hunting (in the sense understood, say, in Leicestershire) 

 dates its inauguration as a Cumbrian sport from the year 1827. 

 However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Foxes of 

 our fells have been hunted with such dogs as those of the 

 Patterdale pack from time immemorial. At one time the 

 pelage of this animal enjoyed considerable repute. The monks 

 of Lanercost included among their chartered privileges a tenth 

 of Fox skins: 'decimam totius venationis prsedicti Roberti de 

 Vallibus et hseredum suorum, tarn in carnibus, quam in coriis et 

 pellibus vulpinis ubicunque per totam terram suam in Cumber- 

 landa venabuntur.' 1 



A good day's sport was generally followed by a ' jollification ' 

 at some favourite inn. The country gentlemen recognised the 

 sport of their poorer neighbours as a useful assistance to their 

 shepherds. Thus Sir Daniel Fleming includes in his accounts 

 for May 12, 1673, ' Item, to some Ambleside men who had 

 killed a spotted fox, £00, 00s. 06d.' The same sum was also 

 forthcoming to the same men in the following year. Similarly, 

 Lord William Howard's accounts for 1612 : 'Nov. 27. To Mr. 

 Skelton's man caching a fox, v s. 5 Perhaps this Fox had proved 

 to be a Tartar ; he may have inflicted some audacious outrage 

 on the Naworth hen-roosts. At all events the price was a high 

 one for the beginning of the seventeenth century. The church- 

 wardens of most of the parishes among our mountains gave an 

 unstinted support to vulpicide, but the figure set upon a fox's 

 head varied in different times, and rose gradually in nearly all 



1 Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. vi. p. 237. In the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries our fell folk were in the habit of gathering- together 

 from far and near to hunt the ' vermin. ' 



