Thoughts on Cubbing With September, cubbing begins--and the young of the thief of the world must justify their existence by making sport. Many sudden and bewildering shocks the cubs receive. Hitherto their lives have been peaceful enough. No wolf has found them out in the cornfields where they have been learning to hunt their own game; no wild dog has dug a way into the nursery earth. To be hunted is quite a new experience. The cubs are spared at least the dread of anticipation as in the early hours of a September morning they settle to sleep in their soft warm kennel, canopied by bracken and brambles. Dreaming, it may be, of their own night's sport, the cheerful voice of the huntsman, as he urges on his newly entered puppies to draw with their elders, means no more than a general alarm to the cubs' drowsy ears. Again and again the hunt may come, yet a cub may have no thought of a game, with life or death as the stake. Not until the attentions of the hounds become pressing and particular can he awake fully to what cub-hunting means. Then perhaps it is too late. But an old fox is quick enough to hear the first sound of the hunt; he breaks away at an unguarded corner, and is allowed to go. There is little chance for the cub when, fat from long ease, he is pushed at last from the home-wood, with the pack in cry a few short chains behind his apology for a brush. A fox-hound, if often cowardly, is a foe of terribly unequal size and strength, one carefully fed, thoroughly schooled to hunting, and trained to great staying power. But a young hound is as indifferent to the business of hunting as is a cub when disturbed for the first time in its life. Lackadaisical is the word for the attitude of each. It is an unfortunate cub that slinks aside to avoid a too-inquisitive puppy and walks into the jaws of an old hound.