A fox does not grow very old without learning how to take advantage of a snarer's catch. He learns to follow up runs and visit places where the snarer has set his snares. And he often pays the penalty, his feet falling foul of the noose. Hunting people commonly suppose that traps--steel gins--are the chief cause of fox-maiming, yet not once in a blue moon is a fox trapped. But if too clever to be caught in a trap, he is not clever enough to keep his feet out of the brass wire of the simple snare. We came across a curious instance showing how a fox may suffer from a snare. Hounds found a fox which ran to ground almost at once. Men were set to work to dig him out, and they found he was merely skin and bone, and round his muzzle they found part of a brass snare. The wire had fixed itself in such a way that he could scarcely open his mouth, so that he was handicapped both in catching food and eating it. From his appearance it was thought that he had been in this miserable plight for a month. It had been better for the fox if hounds had found him a month earlier. * * * * * Cunning Rascals A fox, in emergency, will sham death to perfection. A Master of Hounds once noosed a fox in a whip as he bolted before a terrier from an earth. The fox appeared to have been strangled--when held up by the scruff of the neck his eyes were seen to be closed, his jaws gaped, and the body hung limply down from the hand. He was placed tenderly on the ground--only to dash off into covert. To be over-cunning is a common fault. One fox entered a fowl-house, and amused himself by killing every bird. In departing through the hole by which he had entered, he stuck fast, and was found hanging dead the next morning. Another sought refuge from hounds by jumping on to the low roof of a thatched cottage, and crawling beneath the rafters until he could crawl no farther. It was years before his skeleton was discovered. Some of the foxes found dead on railway lines, by the way, have been put there after death by vulpicides. In olden days the punishment for the crime of fox-killing was a spell in the stocks. Vulpicides remain, but the stocks--some would say alas!--have gone from use for ever. * * * * * A Hunting Argument