28 



FARM VERMIN, HELPFUL AND HURTFUL. 



night roosting on firs and evergreens, the cart hovels, im- 

 plement sheds, and other buildings, where, in due course, 

 wood and iron alike become coated and corroded with 

 droppings. 



When a hen-house exists, it is usually some ramshackle 

 lean-to against the side of a larger building, a monument of 

 the ingenuity of the tenant, and pervious to wind and rain 

 on every side, or, when more substantially constructed,, 

 having no proper ventilation. The inside swarms with 

 creeping and jumping vermin; woodwork and floor alike are 

 coated thickly with hot and acrid guano, feathers, and rotten 

 straw ; the smell is overpowering ; — and yet in poisonous 

 dens like these we expect our poultry to thrive and fowl- 

 rearing to be remunerative. Let owners and occupiers pro- 

 vide suitable and roomy yards and shelters where the poultry 

 can be locked in at night, and we shall hear little more of 

 the depredations of the foxes. 



Indirectly the preservation of foxes is of immense benefit 

 to the agricultural classes. If no foxes there could be no 

 hunting, and if no hunting then no necessity for horses bred 

 for that purpose. Let those who are eager to destroy our 

 great national sport visit any of the great agricultural shows 

 and inspect the classes for blood sires, brood mares, and 

 hunters, and they will then better realise the enormous 

 amount of money which changes hands, all which goes, in 

 one way or other, to benefit agriculture. Again, let fhem 

 calculate the amount of hard cash sown broadcast in a 

 hunting county in wages, purchase of hay, straw, corn, rents 

 and general expenditure, to say nothing of saddlers, tailors^ 

 and veterinary surgeons, hunt balls and hunt suppers, and 

 such-like entertainments. There is no doubt that if it 

 had not been for this lavish expenditure, the sole foundation 

 and beginning of which is our little friend Reynard, the 

 distress in many agricultural districts would in late years^ 

 have been greatly accentuated. There is also a social 



