COUNTRY LIFE
Early Cubs Sir William Beach Thomas's recent note on March cubs and his reference to The Times report of the Oakley hunt having been interrupted by the appearance of a vixen and her cubs recall for me a delightful experience in the Oakley country five years ago, when on a very early April day I came upon a group of fox-cubs playing like kittens in the edge of a pool in a primrose wood. It was soft weather, with a little wind, and the light fur of the cubs, ruffled and rosetted like feathers, was almost golden in the sunshine. I counted thirteen cubs. And with the wind blowing towards me I sat and watched thou appear and disappear and reappear from among the tree-roots and primrose tufts without ever alarming them. They must have then been some weeks old and the spring was normal. They were also the first cubs I had ever seen ; and the sight of them playing softly by the waterside among thousands of full- blown primroses and dark bluebell buds and many oxlips was an unforgettable delight. The fox in fact is an early love-maker ; so that March cubs, contrary to the fox-hunters' notion that thoy do not appear until May, are quite normal.
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