What will happen to the foxes where the hunts disappear,
as some certainly will ? Where shooting continues to flourish the • foxes will vanish completely. Any good keeper can, if he will, destroy every local fox within two breeding seasons. On the
• other hand there are wide areas where the keeper has dis- appeared and is disappearing. Agricultural depression, and the cumulative effect of the Death Duties, have made him too expensive a luxury. In the absence of both huntsman and • keeper the foxes would probably increase greatly. Their • one enemy would be the poultry-keeper ; and against a foe of such surprising acumen as the fox he would probably prove ineffective. Some' of the county councils are becoming official vermin destroyers (I have, for example, seen their officers attacking rats with poison gas) ; and it may come to this, that the only foxhunting left will be raids undertaken by local bodies under the urgency of poultry-keepers. Will the poultry- keeper's ball take the place of the hunt ball in the county town ?
Previous page
