[95] Our MS. only gives this one chapter on the fox, while Gaston Ph[oe]bus has another: _Comment on doit chassier et prendre le renard._ In this he gives directions as to earth-stopping, and taking him in pursenets, and smoking him out with "orpiment and sulphur and nitre or saltpetre." He says January, February, and March are the best months for hunting, as the leaf is off the trees and the coverts are clearer, so that the hounds have more chance of seeing the fox and hunt him closer. He says that one-third of the hounds should be put in to draw the covert, and the others in relays should guard the boundaries and paths, to be slipped as required. Although this is a Frenchman's account of fox-hunting, we have no reason to believe that the fox was treated at that period better by English sportsmen, for until comparatively recent times the fox was accounted vermin, and any means by which his death could be encompassed were considered legitimate, his extermination being the chief object in hunting him, and not the sport. Even as late as the seventeenth century we find that such treatment was considered justifiable towards a fox, for, as Macaulay tells us, Oliver St. John told the Long Parliament that Strafford was to be regarded, not as a stag or a hare, to whom some law was to be given, but as a fox, who was to be snared by any means, and knocked on the head without pity (vol. i. p. 149). A little greyhound is very hardy when (if) he takes a fox by himself, for men have seen great greyhounds which might well take a hart and a wild boar and a wolf and would let the fox go. And when the vixen is assaute, and goeth in her love to seek the dog fox she crieth with a hoarse voice as a mad hound doth, and also when she calleth her whelps when she misses any of them, she calleth in the same way. The fox does not complain (cry) when men slay him, but he defendeth himself with all his power while he is alive. He liveth on all vermin and all carrion and on foul worms. His best meat that he most loveth are hens, capons, duck and young geese and other wild fowls when he can get them, also butterflies and grasshoppers, milk and butter. They do great harm in warrens of coneys and of hares which they eat, and take them so gynnously (cunningly) and with great malice and not by running. There be some that hunt as a wolf[96] and some that go nowhere but to villages to seek the prey for their feeding. As I have said they are so cunning and subtle that neither men nor hounds can find a remedy to keep themselves from their false turns. Also foxes commonly dwell in great hedges or in great coverts or in burrows near some towns or villages for to evermore harm hens and other things as I have said. The foxes' skins be wonderfully warm to make cuffs and furs, but they stink evermore if they are not well tawed. The grease of the fox and the marrow are good for the hardening of sinews. Of the other manners of the fox and of his cunning I will speak more openly hereafter.