ut 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.

We have lately made such an earth in a small covert, because the
original earth is the wrong