Two seasons ago six dead cubs were picked up here; they had died from eating rooks which had been poisoned by some farmers.  It took us a long time to get to the bottom of this affair, for no information is to be got out of Gloucestershire folk; you must ferret such matters out yourself.

There are still live cubs in the breeding-earth, for I heard them there this afternoon; so there is yet hope.  But twenty acres of covert will not stand this sort of thing, considering that the hounds are “through” them once in three weeks, on an average, throughout the winter.  Only one vixen survived at the end of last season, though another one has turned up since.  We have two litters, fortunately.  Where you have coverts handy to a stream of any kind, there will foxes congregate.  They love water-rats and moorhens more than any other food.

A strange prejudice exists among hunting men against cleaning out artificial earths.  There was never a greater fallacy.  Fox-earths want looking to from time to time, say every ten years, for rabbits will render them practically useless by burrowing out in different places.  A block is often formed in the drain by this burrowing, and the earth will have to be opened and the channel freed.

The best possible preventive measure against mange is to clear out your artificial earths every ten years.  As for driving the foxes away by this practice, we cannot believe it.  You cannot keep foxes from using a good artificial drain so long as it lies dry and secluded and the entrance is not too large.  They prefer a small entrance, as they imagine dogs cannot follow them into a small hole.

A farmer made an earth in a hedgerow last year right away from any coverts, and, one would have thought, out of the beaten track of reynard’s nightly prowls; yet the foxes took to this earth at the beginning of the hunting season, and they were soon quite established there.

There is no mystery about building a fox-drain.  Reynard will take to any dry underground place that lies in a secluded spot.  If it faces south—­that is to say, if your earth runs in a half circle, with both entrances facing towards the south or south-west—­so much the better.  The entrance should not be more than about six inches square.  Such a hole looks uncommonly small, no doubt, but a fox prefers it to a larger one.  About half way through the passage a little chamber should be made, to tempt a vixen to lay up her cubs there.  When there are lots of foxes and not too many earths, they will very soon begin to work a new drain, so long as it lies in a secluded spot and within easy distance of Master Reynard’s skirmishing grounds.